The Nation 1937-11-07: Vol 139 Iss 3618

New Fiction—Six Reviews

The Nation

Vol. CXXXIX, No. 3618 Founded 1865 ~~ Wednesday, November 7, 1934

Fascism. at
Columbia University

|
| End of the Campaign - Raymond G. Swing

Sinclair, La Follette, and Cutting - Editorial
The Japanese Trade “Menace” - T. A. Bisson

Scab City, New Jersey. II

Mayor Hague’s Private Preserve
by Alfred H. Hirsch

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| Vol. 159, No. 3018

From CHARLES A. BEARD

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AND THE RISE OF LIBERALISM

by J. Salwyn Schapiro

Condorcet stands out among the philosophes of
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4 The Nation

FOUNDED 1865

Vol. CXXXIX

Contents

EDITORIAL PARAGRAPHS a" a ae wee ie a ae ee
EDITORIALS:
Sinclair, La Follette, and Cutting 5
The President and the Bankers a” = ' .
Wit De. Butler ASG. « « ss oa ee ens » &
The Pie in Art ae ‘ , . Sa
ISSUES AND MEN, THE PEACE CAUSE MOVES ON. By
Oswald Garrison Villard Tw ae oe oe ee ae ee 5
CARTOON: CAPITALIST HEAVEN. By LOW ‘a §2
rHE JAPANESE TRADE “MENACE.” By T. A. Bisson . . . 5

LAST LOOK AT THE CAMPAIGN. By Raymond Gram Swing. . 29
ASCISM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. By a Special Investigator 30
TAXATION IN THE NEW SOCIAL STATE. IV. STATE
gi Fs a a eS a ee ee eee ee
ONFLICT NOT IN THE HEADLINES. By Avis D. Carlson . 534
N THE DRIFTWAY. By the Drifter A ee a oe eee
CORE, sw ww tlw Oe ew Oe t

LABOR AND INDUSTRY:

Scab City. II. Making Jersey City Safe. Ky Alfred H. Hirsch

Kohler Wins. By Hans Christian . . . . 540
CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE ;
BOOKS AND DRAMA:

It’s Fun to Be Immortal. By Joseph Wood Krutch

Mr. Saroyan’s Performance. By Louis Kronenhberger

Mr, Frank’s Seriousness. By Lionel Abcl

Van Gogh as Hero. By Robert Morse... ; $3
Apotheosis of a Heroine. By Roberts Tapley ‘ 43
Catholic Family Portrait. By R. S. Alexander . . . . . 14
ee Se es gk ke a Ae a 45
Drama: Mr. O’Casey’s Charade. By Joseph Wood Krutch . 346

BOARD OF EDITORS
FREDA KIRCIIWEY JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH
RAYMOND GRAM SWING
Associate Enpttors
MARGARET MARSHALL MAXWELL S. STEWART
DOROTHY VAN DOREN

OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD

Contrinuting Epttor

Supscription Rates: Five dollars per annum postpaid in the United Stat
to Canada, $5.50; and to other foreign countries, $6.00.

THE NATION, Published weekly at 20 Vesey St., New York. Ert
a2 second class matter December 13, 1887, at the Post Office at New \

M. Y., and under the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1934, by The N:
inc.; Oswald Garrison Villard, Publisher.

Muriel C. Gray, Advertising Manager. Cable Address: Nation, New York

Ferg IGH THE JAPANESE DEMAND for com-
plete equality is likely to be somewhat modified under
pressure, it is idle to deny that a great gulf exists between the
positions taken by the Japanese and American governments
with regard to naval limitation. ‘Tokio’s demands would
give Japan not only full parity but actual superiority in Far
Eastern waters. “Che Japanese propose that ships designed
for offensive purposes, including vessels with guns of more
h caliber, be drastically limited and that each
country be allowed an equal number. For all other vessels,

than 6.1-ine

designated as defensive—small cruisers, destroyers, and sub-
marines—the total tonnage allotted to each country is to be
identical, but each government is to be free to distribute this
tonnage as it sees fit. While pressing for theoretical equality
with respect to these latter vessels, the Japanese have hinted
that they might refrain from building up to treaty limit e
cept as an “emergency” measure. The United States, on th
other hand, has always maintained that even the 5-5-3 rati:
of the Washington treaty gave Japan definite superiority it

the Far East, and that further concessions were out of th:

NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1934 No. 3615

question. It has indicated its willingness to abandon use ot
the term “ratio,” but only on condition the Japanese agree to
preserve the status quo with regard to “relative security.’
Faced by the danger of a complete collapse of naval limita
tion, the British have desperately sought some basis for
compromise. Although they are naturally opposed to an:
substantial increase in Japanese armaments, their opposition
is by no means as irreconcilable as that of the United States
But as yet they have been unable to find a tenable middle

ground.

HE OUTCOME of the naval discussions is inevitabh

linked with the larger question of Japanese ambitions in
China. Although Tokio has been successful in preventing :
formal discussion of allied political issues in conjunction wit!
the naval talks, it has been unable to prevent Great Britair
and the United States from pressing their protests agains!
As it has been out
lined, there can be little question that the monopoly is a

the projected Manchoukuo oil monopoly.

direct violation of the open door which Japan has promised
to preserve in Manchuria. Under its terms the British and
American oil companies will not only be compelled to sur
render a substantial share of their business to Japanese com
petitors, but will also be required to maintain a six months
supply of oil on hand, which may at any time be taken over
by the government at its own price. Tokio has attempted
to dodge the question on the ground that Manchoukuo was
in “independent” nation, and if the Powers regarded it as a
part of China they should address their protests to Nanking
But the Japanese know perfectly well that they cannot evade
the issue by subterfuge. The present naval ratios are con
ditioned on the maintenance of the open door and the terri-
torial integrity of China. Should Japan persist in denying
these, it ts obvious that the other nations would not daré
grant an upward revision of the ratios. Moreover, there is
little that Japan can do against concerted pressure by the
two Anglo-Saxon Powers. If it comes to an actual show
down, Japan is obviously in no position, economically or pe
litically, to allow itself to become involved in an unrestricted
race in naval construction. “That fact and that fact alon:
mav ultimately bring the Japanese government to its set

HIEF JUSTICE ALFRED A. WHEAT of the Di:

trict of Columbia Supreme Court has found the Rail
way Pension Act unconstitutional on the ground that it is
confiscatory in some of its phases and that it illegally assumes
the right of Congress to legislate in respect to employees not
directly connected with interstate commerce. “This decision
probably represents nothing more than a temporary setbac!
to the progress of economic-security legislation. “The Unite
States Supreme Court is hardly likely to follow Judge Wheat
in drawing metaphysical distinctions between carriers whicl
are and their employees who are not engaged in interstate
commerce. And even if his refinement of the concept of
interstate commefce should prevail, Congress could so re
draft the act as to accommodate it to the refined concept
The interstate-ccommerce argument is based on Supreme

520 The Nation

[ Vol. 139, No. 3618

Court cases decided under the federal Employers’ Liability
Act, in which the court has uniformly held that carriers were
not liable unless the worker “was engaged in interstate trans-
portation, or in work so closely related to such transportation
as to be practically a part of it.” But the liability law applies
only to transportation, and the Supreme Court in deciding
cases has been careful to draw a distinction between transpor-
tation and “commerce—of which transportation is but a
part.” As for Judge Wheat’s argument that mechanical and
clerical employees are not engaged in interstate commerce, the
fact is that from the Debs case in 1895 to the Bedford Cut
Stone case in 1927 the federal courts have continually issued
injunctions in labor disputes on the ground that certain
trade-union activities—whether in the field of transportation,
manufacturing, mining, building, or quarrying—interfered
with interstate commerce to the extent of constituting con-
spiracies in restraint of trade. Not until the Anti-[njunction
Act of 1932 did the federal courts desist from applying the
anti-trust laws against organized labor. Our law, appar-
ently, is governed by its own peculiar logic. If it is a ques-
tion of enjoining a union, then the worker participates in in-
terstate commerce even though he is not engaged in transpor
tation. If it is a question of granting old-age pensions, then
the worker must be engaged in transportation in order to par-

ticipate in interstate commerce.

TOW THAT FIVE WEEKS have been devoted to tes-
pt timony taking, and the case is on the verge of comple-
tion in the federal court at Wilmington, Delaware, the
circumstances which led to the Weirton Steel Company’s
labor troubles seem fairly well established. It is true that
four prominent industrialists have taken the witness stand
to tell the world how beneficial company

unions can be—but their evidence is more than balanced by

for the company

the scores of workers who gave weight to charges against the
steel mill of coercion, intimidation, and violence. It would
have been interesting if the court, instead of hearing Eugene
Grace of the Bethlehem Steel Company, Walter C. Teagle
of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, Charles R.
Hook of the American Rolling Mills Company, and Wil-
liam W. Holloway of the Wheeling Steel Corporation on
the subject of independent versus company unionism, had
heen privileged to hear workers of these companies tell their
side of the story. Deprived of this, the court listened to
tales of threats, lost jobs, and company-police violence. It
heard the story of a plant manager who was prevented from
carrying on negotiations with the steel union because he was
kidnapped by members of the company union, who “meant
business,” as they told him. Fighting fire with fire, appar-
ently, the Weirton Company tried to show that it was the
steel union, and not the employers, which was actually guilty
of coercion, because the union pointed out to the workers
that they were legally entitled t carry on collective bargain-
inn Although the Weirton case has largely disappeared
from the front page of your favorite newspaper it is still of
importance to labor, and the court’s decision in regard to it

vill be awaited with great interest by both sides.
PraiikkK GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA _shas
| brought about the release of George Issoski, one of the

humbler citizens of his State, a steel worker of Aliquippa,
\" irrested on September 11 for handing out union

literature and sent secretly to the State Hospital for the In-
sane. “The commitment was made by a lunacy commission
appointed by the sheriff of Beaver County, which is con-
trolled by the Jones and Laughlin Company. The terror
against collective bargaining reached such a high point in
Aliquippa that the State Department of Labor sent six in-
vestigators to the scene. It was one of these who, asking for
information at a street corner, heard the warning remark,
“You know what happened to George.” But let Governor
Pinchot himself tell “what happened to George” after his
arrest:

Issoski’s wife when questioned declared that her hus-
band’s disappearance was connected with his union activi-
ties. She said that he had been arrested on September 11,
and that several days later she had been sent for by Dr.
Cornelius to come and see him at the Beaver County
jail. There she was, she said, asked to sign a paper declar-
ing that her husband was insane. She added that she was
threatened with the cutting off of her relief unless she did
so. When she was courageous enough to refuse, the right
to see her husband was denied her. From that time until
her husband was found [in the insane asylum] she had no
idea of his whereabouts. So far as the record shows, the
lunacy commission which examined Issoski took no testi-
mony and examined no witnesses. Dr. Bond, of the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, consented to make a special inves-
tigation. His report indicated that Issoski was perfectly
sane. The institution confirmed this diagnosis.

The steel industry boasts that 90 per cent of its workers pre-
fer the company union. ‘What happened to George” is only
one of the more sensational methods by which “preference’’
is induced. Yet even in the face of such terror 3,600 of the
5,000 employees of Jones and Laughlin have joined the inde-
pendent union.

“WRHE FUNDAMENTAL INSTABILITY of our so-

I called recovery program is portrayed in the recently
published estimates of the United States’ balance of payments
for the first half of 1934. During the six-month period there
was a surplus of exports amounting to $173,000,000 and a
net inflow of capital, long- and short-term, of $560,000,000,
which was balanced by a receipt of $920,000,000 in gold.
Stripped of all technicalities, this means that by cheapening
the dollar we have augmented our disgracefully large gold
reserve at the expense of other countries, and at the expense
of the normal economic adjustments which alone can bring
world recovery. With nearly half of the world’s gold
already in our possession, together with a disproportionately
large share of the stocks of silver, it is sheer hypocrisy to say,
as the President did in his recent speech to the bankers, that
there is “a growing appreciation in other nations of the de-
sirability of arriving... at a point of steadiness of prices and
values.” Our constant assault on the world’s monetary re-
serves inevitably acts as a deflationary influence on world
prices and forces weaker nations to adopt more extreme meas-
ures of economic nationalism. Our action would not be so
unjustified if there were any real reason for accumulating
this vast store of gold and silver. The only possible value of
these reserves is as a medium of exchange for the purchase
of goods and services. Yet while an increase of imports,
through a substantial reduction of tariffs, is the one obvious
escape from our difficulties, it is the one step that the Ad

ministration refuses to adopt, even as an experiment

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November 7, 1934]

‘The Nation 521

HE lynching of Claude Neal in the neighborhood of

Marianna, Florida, on October 26, after he had been
taken from jail in Brewton, Alabama, was well attended by
men, women, and children in arms, not to mention an orator
who described himself as a member of the legislature. Nor
was this surprising, for at least two newspapers, the Mari-
inna Times-Courier and the Dothan (Alabama) Eagle, had
thoroughly advertised the affair, even quoting a deputy sher-
ff as saying that in his. opinion the mob would not be mo-
lested either before or after the killing. The Governor of
Georgia, urged to send the National Guard to prevent what
everyone in the State but himself seemed to know would
happen, explained that he had consulted with the local au-
thorities, who had assured him they could “take care of any
situation that might arise.” How well they did so is indi-
cated by the reported remark of still another deputy sheriff
that if the mob was determined to kill the Negro, he knew
if “no way to prevent it.” Neal was accused of the rape
and murder of a young white girl, and so large was the
‘rowd in front of her father’s house, where the lynching had
een planned, that a picked group of the town’s elect took
the Negro off into the woods, mutilated his body with knives
either before or after death, and brought the corpse in for
the crowd to see, after which it was hanged to a tree in front
if the county courthouse. And this was entirely fitting.
For the body of the Negro became thereby the symbol of
justice and decency which were destroyed by violence in that
little Florida town. The whole revolting affair will give a
lecided impetus to the movement for a federal anti-lynching
iw.

HE PLACE OF THE NEGRO in the far-reaching

program of the TVA should be defined as soon as pos-
sible. Negroes themselves believe they are being slighted
both in the immediate working program and in plans for the
future. “The real complaint,” write Charles H. Houston
and John P. Davis in the Crisis, “lies in the failure of the
TVA to incorporate the Negro as an integral part in its
whole economic and social rehabilitation program. The
general attitude of the TVA toward the Negro is that he is
a harmless nuisance which has to be tolerated but which one
cannot afford to encourage.” Specifically, the Negroes note
that they are excluded from the model town of Norris, and
that employment of Negroes on the TVA projects in gen-
ral is confined to low-pay levels. As matters now stand,
the accusation of unfairness is hard to refute. Norris, being
in the hill district where Negroes are not numerous, was
onceived as a white project. Negroes later were employed
in small numbers and then excluded from the model town
ind its remarkable educational and social privileges. At
Wheeler Dam, in a district where Negroes are much more
numerous, more than 20 per cent of the workers are Negroes,
but no social or educational planning has been done for
employees of either race. We must expect that the TVA,
when it announces its program here, will evince an interest in
the Negro and not take the easy course of acquiescing in the
traditional prejudice of the South. It is not enough simply
to employ Negroes on TVA projects on a population basis,
vhich is being done, nor will the rights of Negroes at
Wheeler Dam be upheld by giving them educational and so-
ial advantages. The TVA is long-term planning of the first
mportance and is known as the most enlightened undertak-

ing of the New Deal. It cannot keep this reputation unless
it builds a community in which Negroes, so far as the state
can determine it, have full economic and social equality.

F IT REALLY COST only eighty dollars for the oil

which enabled the new Union Pacific streamlined speed
train to cross the continent from Los Angeles to New York
in only 56 hours and 55 minutes, we are indeed witnessing a
revolution in railroading. ‘This time is 14 hours and 32
minutes faster than the previous transcontinental record, and
the train could have cut off tive hours more on its run be
tween Chicago and New York, which was only twenty min-
utes faster than that of the regular Twentieth Century Lim
ited. What strikes one most about the train is its smallness
and compactness. The aisles are so narrow that a very stout
person could hardly go through them, and the sections of the
Pullmans are so small that it seems as if the passengers would
have to be fitted in with a shoe horn. The train as a whole
weighs only 200 tons, as against approximately 700 tons
for a standard train of the same length. Undoubtedly
there will be remarkable developments in this type of train
within a very short time, precisely as was the case with the
automobile. That the speed will be increased goes without
saying—this train averaged only a little less than sixty miles
an hour, which by no means represents its capabilities even
on the run from Los Angeles to Chicago. But as it is, the
travelers on it lost only two business days and three nights.
It was certainly time for the railroads to act. Three ques-
tions remain to be answered—whether it is not too late,
where the railroads can obtain the money to reequip them-
selves, and whether they can pay the interest on this money
after they have obtained it.

OOKING LIKE A BENEVOLENT VIKING, Miss
Gertrude Stein on October 24 returned to her native
land, bringing Miss Alice B. Toklas with her in tangible
form to quiet any doubts that may have been harbored of
her existence (Miss Toklas’s existence—nobody has ever
doubted Miss Stein’s). She was genial to reporters, gasped
amiably at the New York skyline, and was not ashamed of
considerable ignorance of American affairs, particularly of
the death of President Coolidge, which had evidently not yet
reached her ears. Moreover, in advance of her lectures on
the subject, she explained why she writes as she does. It is
because she writes as she talks. “I do talk as I write, but
you can hear better than you can see. You are accustomed to
see with your eyes differently to the way you hear with your
ears, and perhaps that is what makes it hard to read my works
for some people.” Her public may as well let the whole
matter go at that, merely noting that their eyesight was bet-
ter in the perusal of “The Autobiography of Alice B.
Toklas” than in, say, the following sentence from ‘‘Geog-
raphy and Plays”: “Lightning has no meaning, gleaning has
choosing descending, bread has origin, a taste is spreading.”
We have tried both seeing and hearing this, and the two
senses seem equally baffled. It might be a good idea to fol-
low the noble example of the producers of “Four Saints in
Three Acts,” and wrap it up in cellophane. This would un-
doubtedly improve the visibility and it would be a lot of fun
besides. All of which should be taken as no disrespect to
Miss Stein, but as an elliptical way of saying we admire and
like her, and wish her a merry and profitable home-coming.

5322 The Nation i Vol. 139. No. 3618

Sinclair, La Follette, and Cutting

HERE are only three vitally important contests in the
elections now so close at hand. In Wisconsin, in
New Mexico, and in California the outcome will be
of profound significance for the entire electorate and for the
mimediate political development of the country. Elsewhere
there is apathy among the voters, partly because of their ex-
traordinary confidence in Roosevelt, partly because the masses
are so deeply engrossed in the struggle for a bare existence
that they have little time or strength for anything else. De-
creased registration in various quarters tells the story, and
so does the absence of any genuine leadership or alternative
economic program on the part of the Republicans. But in
the States we have mentioned the fight is on, the issue is
joined. Notably in California the lines are clearly drawn.
Whatever else may be said about Upton Sinclair's extraordi-
nary achievement in a contest which he began without
money, with only a few followers about him, and with ap-
parently no hope of success even in the primaries, it cannot
be denied that his candidacy has quickened the political life
of the State in an amazing way. He has made the electorate
face the economic issues of the day. He has challenged
ngle-handed not only the press of the State but the in-
trenched forces of privilege and wealth. The character of
the opposition to him and the despicable measures and weap-
ons to which it has stooped are his chief glory. As a result
he is likely to win the whole-hearted Support of every liberal.
He is fighting the worst press conspiracy which we have
ever witnessed. As we write, the most unscrupulous ele-
nents in both the Democratic and Republican parties are
losing, in upon him. Chester Williams, of the American
Civil Liberties Union of San Francisco, backs the charge of
inclair that the Literary Digest poll was loaded by Merriam
upporters who bought up the ballots at 25 cents each and
them for the Republican candidate; moreover, the poll
did not include Los Angeles County, where Sinclair’s strength
is admittedly the greatest. George Creel, after waiting as
ong as possible to see what the outcome would be, has re-
ited Sinclair in a letter that reeks of self-righteousness
nd a new concern for the public welfare. We are aware
at some of our readers in California and elsewhere have
rave doubts of the workability and wisdom of Sinclair’s
EPIC plan and of his executive ability. Yet the fact remains
iat if Sinclair is elected, the cause of social and economic
tice will be advanced. If he loses, the forces of privilege
d black reaction will be heartened the country over.
In Wisconsin, too, the outcome of the three-cornered

ntest among the Republicans, the Democrats, and the

la Follette Progressives is of vital import to the develop-
nt of retorm policies in the United States. As for Senator
| i lollette, urely no Nation reader in Wisconsin needs

urging from us to stand by him. The Senator’s steady growth
n usefulness and power, his statesmanship and that of his
) other, and their ourave in Dt ak mr thei old politi il ties
nd starting a new party are all sufficient to focus the na-
tion's attention upon what is happening in their State. If
there is a clean Progressive sweep in Wisconsin, people who

h to break loose from the old party thraldoms will take

heart everywhere. In New Mexico, also, Senator Bronson
Cutting’s fight to win a well-earned reclection has bee:
thrown into clear relief, not only because he is one of th«
most useful of the Progressive Republican Senators but be
cause, for some reason which is not clear to us, the Roosevel:
Administration has turned against him. It is generally as
sumed that this is because he has been at times outspoken i:
his criticisms of the President’s policies and the New Dea!
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, the President identified himseli
with the La Follette candidacy; in New Mexico the Presi
dent has not personally acted, but others near him have.

‘The truth is that in this election the President has
played politics, in the main with remarkable skill—as usual

—yet not with sufficient skill to avoid the charge of hypo

risy or at least of gross inconsistency, for which the a
tivities of his Postmaster-General are also partly respon
sible. The President has insisted that he was neutral in al!
local contests, and yet, in addition to the facts cited above,
he has allowed Mr. Guffey of Pennsylvania, Democrat
candidate for Senator, to go in and out of the White House,
as Mr. Swing points out on another page, in such a way as to
lead to the inevitable deduction that he stands high in the
President’s graces. ‘here was never the slightest necessity
for the President’s playing politics. However great their
hardships, the masses of the workers are so strongly for the
President that in a State like West Virginia the only ques
tion is whether or not he will get more support than he did in
1932. When the New York Herald Tribune permits its
Washington correspondent to admit on its front page that
the President is going to win a great victory, if an indirect
one, we may be certain that the portents are beyond dispute.
Yet that vote of confidence, when it comes, must not be taken
wholly as an expression of progressive sentiment or as an
indorsement of his liberal policies. There are deductions to
be made for benefits received and politics played.

As for the rest of the country, the disheartening thing is
the absence of strong candidates and vigorous personalities
in the Senatorial fights. In Ohio Senator Fess is beaten, but
“Vic” Donahey is no man to represent that State in this time
of crisis. ‘The same is even truer of Governor Moore of
New Jersey, also certain of election. As we have pointed
out, the Senatorial situation in New York is a disgrace to the
State with only the able candidacy of Norman Thomas to r:
deem it. In Missouri, the State of Washington, and else-
where there is no promise either that the New Deal will be
strengthened or that the intelligence and ability of the Senate
will be increased. In many places the Senatorial nomination
has gone begging, with loss of public interest as a result, and
the same is true of numerous local contests, like that in Colo
rado, where there is no choice between the two gubernatorial!
candidates. If New York stands out, it is only because of the
avyressive tactics of Robert Moses, which are, however, con-
siderably offset by his passing the lie, calling names, favorin
the sales tax, and refusing satisfactorily to define his position
with respect to the power trust. In Maryland Govern
Ritchie’s fifth gubernatorial candidacy—unprecedented in our
history—deserves public approval.

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November 7, 1934] The N

ation 523

The President and
the Bankers

a HE encounter between the President and the bankers
last week was a notable instance of the usefulness of
words to hide the repression of ideas. The Presi-

lent’s speech, put through a sieve, yields only a minor nugget

t substance—his promise to take the government out of busi-

ess as rapidly as the banks resume their normal functions.

[ven this must rank as a glimpse of the obvious. The spokes-

nan of the bankers, Jackson E. Reynolds, did not know how

» be so artfully vague. He had to make two major con-

ssions to the Administration. He admitted the justification

for delay in balancing the budget, and acknowledged the
od sense of not proclaiming a stabilized dollar. ‘Thus the

‘resident apparently scored twice to one score for the other

ide. ‘The assembled four thousand bankers cheered the

resident rapturously, undisturbed at being beaten. The
tock market, out of reach of the President’s charm, thought
was wiser, and at once marked down prices sharply.

Behind the scenes, however, it is rumored that the bank-

; came out considerably better than would appear at first
rht. It is hinted at Washington that the President agreed

, drop the idea of a Central Bank in exchange for accept-

nce of a permanent scheme of deposit insurance, with a

nit of $5,000 a year, which would involve a liability ot

jot greater than | per cent of the total deposits of any par
ular bank. Whether this means that the President has
rrendered to the bankers is not yet clear. At the very
ast it means that he has abandoned open hostility and is
xperimenting with cooperation. Nor does one need to
irch long to discover the reason for this amazing reversal

I policy.

The fact is the halfway measures of the New Deal have
it fulfilled expectations. Pump-priming has not made the
vater flow. ‘The country staggers under a load of unprece-
iented expenditure which must go on if the present level of
oroduction, low as it is, is to be maintained. The army of
the unemployed is not being demobilized; the great majority
it the people are near, or on, or over the borderline of pov-
ty. The New Deal began as a cheerful program of re-
iving business with moderate government spending while
\rrecting many obvious abuses. The spending was too small
nd too slow, and the reforms were insufficient. Those that
ould have amounted to something, a more adequate distribu-
tion of wealth and a new charter of responsibility for labor,
re still to come.

Obviously the Administration will not bring new energy
nto its treatment of the crisis for some time. It will con-
nue to spend for relief; it will go on priming the pump
vith public-works projects. It hopes for a substantial busi-
ess revival by next summer. The President talks of the

advantage of increased output at lower prices, while the pro-
luction and price controls of the NRA are being relaxed.

But this presupposes that revival is inevitable. So supposed

Hoover, and so supposed the New Dealers last year and

igain this autumn. Is it not time for the Administration to

tell frankly and fully what it is prepared to do if recovery

ines not come?

The alternatives are simple. Either business will ac-
cept the leadership and reforms of the New Deal and put its
capital to work, or the government will take its place. It is
folly to say that for business this is not a matter of volition.
‘The bankers through their spokesmen admitted by inference
that credit might have been more generously given. What
bankers and business men really want is to run the country
as they have run it since time immemorial. And now that
they are not running it they have lost “confidence.” Will
they have more confidence if the government undertakes
to put the unemployed to work? Government spending on
an adequate scale can do it, and indeed will do it if neces-
sary, for the country will not wait for recovery much longer.

The prospect of such spending does not frighten us as
it would the bankers. It need not, as they believe, lead to
inflation if the Administration invests in permanent values,
and if it amortizes its loans out of heavy taxation in the
higher income brackets. Most of the present spending is
transitory in value, with an eye on consumers’ purchases and
early recovery. We prefer to see recovery bought outright,
with an end to the question whether the people are ruled by
the government or by business. But if it is too early for such
a solution, we wish the President would tell the country
what he has in mind beyond the measures of the moment.
And we hope that blueprints are being prepared for the
eventuality that recovery once more fails to keep its ren-
dezvous. We hear a good deal about the thought given in
Washington to the reduction of the NRA, and about the
study spent on modest housing programs. We should like
to hear more about the program which is going to put all
the unemployed to work and keep them permanently busy
as suggested in the President’s last broadcast. If it had
such knowledge, the country would net worry about prob
lems of currency and relief, or even be anxious over the atti-
tude of bankers.

Will Dr. Butler Act?

OR years The Nation has marked the growing liber
alism of the president of Columbia University and
read with satisfaction his various pronouncements in

defense of liberal principles in politics and learning. Only
last July, before the Pilgrims in London, he warned his listen-
ers of the encroachments of absolutism and called upon ‘“‘the
English-speaking people” to “rise together in their over-
whelming might to defend the [democratic] foundations on
which their civilization is being built.”” These were cour-
ageous and timely words.

But our admiration for Dr. Butler gives us the right to
demand that he deliver not only the sentiment but the sub-
stance of liberalism. Are the principles he supports actually
in force at Columbia? The unhappy answer to this ques-
tion is to be found in an article on another page of this issue.
The investigator who wrote Fascism at Columbia University
asserts that active, avowed fascists are in control of the
Italian Department and the Casa Italiana, and that the Casa
is a center of fascist propaganda in New York. He assumes
that President Butler is not aware of these facts. We wish
we could join in this charitable supposition, but we find it
impossible. President Butler is not a stupid man, nor does

524 The Nation

[ Vol. 139, No. 3618

he hold aloof from the detailed administration of his univer-
sity. He must know what is going on. Why, then, does he
passively permit the fascization of an important department?

We think we know what Dr. Butler’s answer to this
question would be. He would appeal to the ideals of liber-
alism to condone the crushing of liberty at Columbia. He
would assert that each department must be allowed to gov-
ern itself, that the men in question are able scholars and
teachers and must not be discriminated against because of
their opinions. We wish to assure President Butler that we
have no desire that teachers—even reactionary teachers—be
excluded from Columbia for political reasons. What we do
demand is that such teachers be prevented from excluding
men of opposing views and from using a university depart-
ment for partisan political ends. Does President Butler
deny that the men in control of the Italian Department have
done this? If so, we ask most seriously and respectfully that
he answer a few direct questions.

Social gatherings and lectures are continually held at
the Casa Italiana. Has any liberal Italian ever been invited
to speak there on any subject?

Has free discussion been permitted there of Italian po-
litical principles or even of general theories of government?

Has any anti-fascist been offered a teaching position or
given a graduate degree in the Italian Department? Are
there, in fact, any liberals teaching in the department today?
(We note, for example, that Professor Arthur Livingston,
undoubtedly the leading American scholar in the field of
Italian literature and culture, formerly in the Italian De-
partment, is now listed as associate professor of French.)

Have not both money and furnishings for the Casa
Italiana been donated by agents of the Italian government?

Why was Professor Riccio awarded a medal the other
day by the Italian government; was it for pure scholarship?

Does Dr. Butler believe, in short, that the Italian De-
partment, under the headship of the fascist, Dino Bigongiari,
is run according to academic standards of free inquiry and
discussion; and does he believe that the Casa Italiana, under
the control of Giuseppi Prezzolini, is merely a social and cul-
tural organization similar to the Maison Frangaise ?

How would he like it if the Soviet Government helped
to furnish and support a Karl Marx House at Columbia for
the purpose of similarly propagating Russian “culture”?

We wish to call President Butler’s attention to a book-
let recently published by the Student League for Industrial
Democracy, entitled “Italian Intellectuals Under Fascism.”
In this brief but carefully documented account of the theories
of education governing the schools and universities of
Italy, it is pointed out that all university professors are forced
to sign an oath pledging themselves to fulfil their academic
duties “with the purpose of forming active and valiant citi-
zens devoted to the fascist regime.”” We readily admit that
Dino Bigongiari, as a teacher in an American university, is
not bound by the academic regulations of his native land. It
is no less true that as an ardent fascist he will base his teach-
ing and the management of his department on fascist ideals.
‘The record of the Italian Department and the Casa Italiana

supports this assertion only too well.

We call upon President Butler, in the name of the lib-
eral principles he has himself publicly espoused, to investigate
the matters exposed in the article and to answer the ques-
tions propounded in this editorial.

The Pie in Art
S everybody knows and as nearly everybody has pointed
out to friends who knew it already, Mickey Mouse
is the supreme artistic achievement of the moving
picture. The more prosy even go on to wonder at the fact,
but it is not, after all, so much of an anomaly. There are
plenty of analogues in the chronicles of literature, and there
is also an absolute parallel in the brief history of the movies
themselves. Ask anyone who remembers them in the days
before the war when Roxy’s paranoia was just beginning to
manifest itself in the first supercinema up in Harlem, and
the chances are ten to one that he will recall most viv-
idly, not the polite comedies which the Edison Company
was making in the Bronx, not the moral domestic dramas
which Lubin was turning out in Philadelphia, and not even
the spectacles of the superman Griffith, but the Keystone
comedies, in which cops with a variety of strange mustaches
chased bathing beauties across the beach, and the artistic pos-
sibilities of the pie—conventionally called custard but actuall)
huckleberry, which photographs better—were first fully ex-
ploited. Anyone not criminally ignorant of the period knows
also that Mack Sennett was the inventor of this genre, and
it is no more than right that he should become, as he now
has, the subject of a biography appropriately illustrated with
photographs of the entire corps of cops and bathing beauties,
as well as of Mabel Norman, Fatty Arbuckle, Gloria Swan-
son, and others who owe their greatness to his unfailing eye
for budding talent.*

It appears that Sennett (real name, Sinnott) was a
boilermaker with operatic aspirations who got into the Bio-
graph Company as an extra when his musical career stalled.
It appears further that in a very few years he had made five
million dollars out of slapstick and that he then lost most
of it when he did not realize in time that his day was passed.
But this summary gives no real idea of the career of a man
who was a demoniacally energetic plunger as well as a hard-
boiled executive. It was he who plucked Charlie Chaplin
out of a forty-dollar-a-week vaudeville job, and it was under
his management that Charlie turned from a dismal failure
in his first picture to a dazzling success. More revealing of
his methods as well as of the general atmosphere in which
the early movies were made is the story of his first produc-
tion in California, where he had been sent by two ex-book-
makers with a little money. In a taxi between railroad sta-
tion and hotel he saw the beginning of a D. A. R. parade,
conceived a scenario impromptu, dumped two comedians
and a camera man on the street with instructions to “run
in and out of the parade, fall and keep mugging all the
time,” and then, during the afternoon, finished the picture.
No wonder the ex-bookmakers were pleased.

Perhaps Sennett’s comedies were not really as funny in
their outrageous way as they seem in retrospect, but one gag
quoted in the biography makes us think that perhaps they
were. A character was praying for “more light.” Imme-
diately a window above fell out of its casement on his head.
He looked up and the subtitle read: “Either my prayer has
been answered or that window needs fixing.”

*Father Goose. The Story of Mack Sennett.” By Gene Fowler
Covici-Friede. $3.

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November 7, 1934]

The Nation

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,

Issues and Men
The Peace Cause Moves On

ESPITE all the discouragements, the movement for

peace goes on. Who can doubt it who follows the

activities of our chief church organizations? Year
by year some of them become more militant, more deter-
mined in their opposition to all war. What lover of peace
can read the pastoral letter just published by the House of
Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church without joyous
amazement? Here is what they say about the abominable
armament business:

The passions that are stimulated by greed and unholy
umbitions have found fresh expression, and are fostered and
promoted by the infamous practices of the manufacturers of
munitions and armaments, whose soulless enterprise knows
neither friend nor foe in the prosecution of its nefarious
ways. For greed of gain and wickedness of design the in-
dustry has no parallel in modern times. It foments strife,
fans the flame of hatred, embroils nations in bitter rival-
ries, and uses the ill-gotten wealth at its command to inspire
fear and to provoke war. It is a major factor in creating
unrest and generating suspicion among peoples.

If that does not sound exactly as if it had come from the
olumns of The Nation, what could? It is what we have
een saying for years. But let us read further in this pastoral

tter:
War is outlawed and solemn peace pacts affirm it.
. . As Christians we can have no part in any program
which is designed to violate these principles enunciated by
the Prince of Peace. War is murder on a colossal scale.

hat is precisely what some of us were saying all during the
World War at no little risk, and it is of course directly con-
trary to what Bishop Manning and that eminent Episcopal
rector, Dr. Darlington of New York, have been teaching
right along. But the bishops do not stop there. Many of
them upheld the World War. They have seen the light,
and here is what they now say:

The testimony of the Great War shows the wicked
folly of such a struggle, and its aftermath has shattered the
world’s hope and issued in confusions and disorder, the
magnitude of which we are yet incapable of measuring.

Dr. Darlington, who is chaplain of New York’s crack cav-
alry regiment, should be interested in this assertion of the

bishops : 2

The Christian Church cannot and will not deny loyalty
and fealty to its Lord by being partner in any scheme, na-
tional or international, that contemplates the wholesale de-
struction of human life. Jt refuses to respond to that form
of cheap patriotism which has as its slogan: “In times of
peace prepare for war.” It regards as wicked the waste of
the nation’s wealth in the building of vast armaments
and the maintenance of greatly augmented forces on land
and sea. [Washington papers please copy, and Franklin
D. Roosevelt please read. ]

A few weeks ago the Presbyterian Synod of the State of
New York met at Buffalo and indorsed the recommendations
of its committee on social service. After citing the stand of

the Presbyterian General Assembly in supporting all con-
scientious objectors to war and demanding that they be ex-
cused in educational institutions from all “military instruc-
tion without loss in academic standing or official censure of
any kind,” and after expressing its opposition to military
training in schools and colleges, the committee urged the
Synod through its pastors to influence parents “to refrain
from sending their children to schools where military train-
ing is required.” ‘This savors of a boycott, and it is strength-
ened by the fact that the Synod approved opposition to the
appropriation by the State Legislature of any funds for the
drill hall at Cornell, where there is compulsory military
training. When one remembers that the bulk of the mem-
bers of the Synod were encouraging preparedness in 1915
and 1916 and then shouting for the war and proclaiming it
to be God’s will, it is plain that we have come far in a short
time. The Synod does not propose to be caught napping the
next time. It therefore indorsed the recommendation of the
committee that the churches should now make clear to all
their members the economic price to us of neutrality if war
should break out anywhere in the world, and educate them
to be willing to pay the price of relinquishing our trade as a
neutral rather than to be drawn into ‘‘the madness of war.”
As the committee said, ““The economic price of neutrality is
as nothing beside the spiritual and human price of war.”
The Synod also instructed the committee to follow the Sen-
ate investigation into the manufacture of war munitions
and to make suggestions hereafter as to the advisability of
investing church funds in corporations which have a major
interest in war material.

There are other reasons for hope in this matter of peace.
If the Japanese seem bound to make trouble over naval
armaments, the impending settlement of Japanese and Rus-
sian friction in Manchuria by the sale of the Chinese Eastern
Railroad removes that danger of war which alarmed our high-
est officials at the turn of the year. There are still sore
spots galore in Europe, over all of which hangs the menace
of Hitler. But speaking as rector of St. Andrew's Uni-
versity in Scotland the other day, General Smuts, who fore-
saw at Paris the wickedness of the Treaty of Versailles and
denounced it when it was finished, declared to the students
that, despite the failure of disarmament and the “vogue of
silly drilling, strutting about in uniforms and shirts of va-
rious colors,” he did not find a real war temper anywhere
or the material conditions necessary for a modern war. He
was much more alarmed by the new tyrannies in Europe
than by the danger of another great war. Encouraging all
this is; still it calls for redoubled activity against the mili-
taristic forces of evil now so strongly intrenched in the
United States as well as abroad.

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November 7, 1934}

The Nation

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The Japanese Trade “Menace”

By T. A.

UR sadly muddled world economy has recently ex-

hibited many contradictory phenomena, but perhaps
none more extraordinary than Japan’s rapid trade
xpansion during the past two years. While some other coun-
ries have regained a small fraction of their pre-depression
ide, Japan has already reached a point within striking dis-
nce of its 1929 total. The moment for this trade drive,
hich began while Japan was slashing its way through
raps of paper” such as the Nine Power Treaty and the
nti-war pact, could have been better timed. With Japanese
ins and airplanes bespeaking Japan’s political ambitions so
inreservedly in Manchuria and at Shanghai, the Western
world turned to face this economic offensive with a heighit-
ned sense of alarm.

Diatribes against the Japanese “trade menace” became
he stock in trade of a certain type of politician in many
\Vestern countries. The customary charges of “dumping”
ind “sweated” labor were leveled against Japan by self-
‘ehteous Western business men, who would naturally be
xpected to feel a sympathetic concern for the welfare of
Japanese factory workers—if not for their own. On the
floors of congresses and parliaments and in specially arranged
exhibits Japanese goods which sold for incredibly low prices
were displayed as object lessons of the need for action. The
Hearst press and Mussolini were equally alarmed, and both
oined in whipping up sentiment for a new crusade against
he “yellow peril.”

In the last analysis this general hullabaloo was based on
the grievances of the particular industrial and commercial
nterests which were feeling the pinch of intensified Japanese

mpetition. It was the pressure of these special interests
that obtained the enactment of a mounting list of tariff in-
reases and quota systems against Japanese goods in many
ountries of the world. As usual the consumer interest in
ow-priced goods was ignored in the making of these deci-
They represented the instinctive reaction of a protec-
tionist era, and necessarily excluded a larger view of Japan’s
trade expansion—its extent, its distribution, the factors that
nade it possible, and its potentialities. It has now become
possible, with the evidence of two years’ developments at
ind, to draw up a balance sheet.

The increases in Japan’s trade during the past two years

ake a substantial showing. ‘Total Japanese trade advanced
from 2,383,000,000 yen in 1931 to 3,778,000,000 in 1933,
s compared with 4,365,000,000 in 1929. The recovery has
een greater in exports than in imports and has led to a
marked reduction in Japan’s normal excess of imports. Meas-
ured in yen, exports for 1933 were 62.3 per cent above those
r 1931, and only 13.4 per cent below those for 1929. Ow-
ing to the depreciation of the yen, this recovery must be
checked with reference to volume and gold-dollar value.
l'aking 1928 as the base, the indices for Japan’s export trade
in 1933 were 112.7 in volume, 94.4 in yen value, and 40.9
| gold-dollar value. In other words, as compared with 1928
very much larger volume of exports in 1933 sold for some-
vhat less in Japanese currency and for tremendously less in

sions.

BISSON

vold dollars. The decline in gold value, however, needs
be discounted, since the internal purchasing power of
yen remained fairly stable in 1932 and 1933.

The shift in the regional distribution of Japan’s export
during the 1931-33 period has been perhaps the most signifi
cant aspect of its trade recovery. In its old-established
Asiatic markets Japan had by 1933 regained the position oc
cupied in 1929. In the newer markets of Africa, Oceania,
the Near East, and Latin America, however, Japan had
nearly doubled its pre-depression export totals. Since Japa-
nese goods still form a relatively small proportion of the tota!
trade of these latter areas, the importance of this advance
can be easily exaggerated. Nevertheless, Japanese export
to these newer markets showed continued large increases dur-
ing the first half of 1934, indicating that in the future Japan
may well become a serious competitor in a much wider area
of world trade than it was active in before the depression.

The political repercussions of Japan’s trade expansion
have been most violent where inroads have been made on
the colonial preserves of other imperialist Powers. An acut
struggle in British India during 1933 was settled by an
agreement for the exchange of Indian raw cotton and Japa-
nese cotton goods on a strict quota basis, with provision for
higher tarift preference to British goods. Effective until
March 31, 1937, this Indo-Japanese pact constitutes a threc
year armed truce. On the other hand, the quotas imposed by
the British government in May, 1934, on imports of Japa-
nese cotton and rayon goods into Crown colonies represented
an open declaration of war. Similar difficulties have arisen in
the Dutch East Indies. On July 25, 1934, in the midst of a
trade conference held at Batavia to iron out Dutch-Japanese
issues, the Dutch authorities imposed quotas on a number ot
Japanese products that were monopolizing the local market.
In the same way tariff increases have recently been suggested
in the Philippines for the major purpose of protecting im-
ports from the United States against Japanese competition.

In each of these instances the interest of the colonia!
population in low-priced goods has been left out of considera
tion. Resort to tariffs and quotas in such cases, especially
where no local industry is affected by Japanese competition,
constitutes a particularly vicious use of foreign political con-
trol. In this regard the judgment rendered on Great Britain
by the Economist is equally applicable to other Powers: “But
for the future it appears that among the benefits of British
rule the doubtful privilege of buying expensively from Lan-
cashire is to be forced upon the ‘native’ in many corners of
the globe.”

Contrary to the general trend, Japan’s exports to the
United States, even in the 1932-33 period, have increased
but little. A major decline of more than 400,000,000 yen
between 1929 and 1930 has never been regained. On the
other hand, Japan’s imports from the United States have
been rising steadily, until in 1933 they virtually equaled the
1929 figure. As a result, since 1932 the balance of trade
has shifted heavily in favor of the United States. For the
first half of 1934 purchases from the United States exceed-

528 The Nation

[ Vol. 139, No. 3618

ed sales by 176,000,000 yen. Nevertheless, certain firms af-
tected by Japanese competition have brought sufficient pres-
sure to bear on Washington to obtain increased tariff rates on
a number of Japanese products. Before this process is al-
lowed to proceed farther, it might be well to consider that
it will eventually jeopardize the large and growing market
which Japan affords for American goods.

Two factors have been largely responsible for Japan’s
successful trade drive—low production costs and the depre-
ciation of the yen. The cheap production costs of Japanese
industry are the result of low labor costs and an increasing
degree of technical and organizational efficiency. Wages in
Japan are exceedingly low, and the bulk of Japanese factory
operatives work from fifty-five to sixty hours a week. On
the other hand, it is questionable whether the productive ca-
pacity of the Japanese worker, except possibly in the textile
industry, is equal to that of the Western worker. Students
of Japan’s industrial economy have always enjoyed the game
of balancing these considerations against each other in an
effort to decide how cheap Japanese labor really is. Evidence
presented at the 1934 conference of the International Labor
Organization showed that in 1931 wages in Japan were vir-
tually equivalent in gold value to those of Italy and Poland.
It was also pointed out that in subsequent years the deteri-
oration of wages and labor conditions in Japan had been no
more excessive than in other countries. On the basis of this
evidence it may be assumed that the labor costs of Japanese
industry are at least as low as and probably somewhat lower
than those of the most economically managed industries in
Western countries. Whatever the actual differential may
he, however, it would not be sufficient by itself to account
for Japan’s extraordinary invasion of world markets since
1932.

When the Minseito vovernment took office in 1929, it
launched a vigorous drive for the rationalization of Japanese
industry. A Japanese NRA, designed to restrain reckless
competition, to promote the formation of trade associations,
and to strengthen the control of industry through such asso-
ciations, went into effect in August, 1931, and has since been
applied to virtually all the chief industries of Japan. (Unlike
the NRA this act made no effort to control wages or hours
of work.) Ina number of selected industries programs were
ilso instituted which involved the fixing of production
quotas, the establishment of joint sales offices, and if neces-
sary the enforcement of minimum prices. Even before 1929
a progressive improvement in technical and managerial skill
had been taking place in the most advanced Japanese indus-
tries. “Che Japanese textile industry, with up-to-date machin-
ery and flexible adaptation of the type and quality of textile
fabrics to particular consumer areas, constitutes the pre-
eminent illustration of this development. On the whole,
however, with the possible exception of the textile industry,
this rationalization movement has merely lessened a com-
petitive advantage that in many cases still rests with the
West.

The rapid depreciation of the Japanese yen in 1932 and
1933, added to the low production costs of industry, was suf-
ficient to confer a decisive advantage on Japan’s export trade.
Such an advantage should normally prove but temporary, es-

ecially in the case of Japan, which must import large quan-
s of industrial raw materials, notably raw cotton, but sev-
i factors have combined to prolong this advantage over a

period of years. Japanese cotton manufacturers, prior to
Japan’s departure from the gold standard in December,
1931, had purchased large stocks of American raw cotton at
cheap prices. Currency depreciation has so far resulted in
only a moderate rise of Japanese internal prices, a rise which
has not seriously affected costs of production. Instead, the
burdens of this inflationary process, through the continued
decline of wages and the lengthening of hours, have been
placed on the shoulders of the working class. Japan’s trade
recovery has stimulated business activity, increased earnings,
and resulted in greater employment, but at the same time it
has lowered the living standard of the employed workers.

An evaluation of Japan’s trade revival raises two major
issues—the degree of its stability and its effect on the world
at large. That the limits of the expansion have not yet been
reached is sufficiently indicated by the continued increases in
1934. For the first half of this year Japan’s total trade
amounted to 2,162,000,000 yen, as against 1,846,000,000 in
the corresponding period of 1933. On this showing Japan’s
foreign trade for 1934 is likely to equal or surpass the pre-
vious high level of 1929.

For the present at least, the factors which have com-
bined to give Japanese manufacturers a decisive advantage in
world trade are continuing to operate in their favor. At the
same time a number of tendencies working in the contrary
direction are steadily gaining strength. New tariff barriers
and quota systems against Japanese products are continually
being set up. Equalization of internal and external price
levels, which normally follows currency depreciation, should
eventually eliminate the advantage of the depreciated yen.
While the exchange differential continues to exist, however,
Japanese trade should at least be able to maintain a level ap-
proximating that of pre-depression years. On a long-term
view the most serious threat to Japan’s export trade is the
growth of competing industries in areas that are now markets
for Japanese goods—a process that has already gone far in
China and British India.

Japan’s export manufacturers have based their success
on the simple principle of taking a smaller margin of profit
on mass sales at extraordinarily low prices. This policy is
particularly effective in a period of world-wide depression,
when price rather than quality considerations are uppermost
in the mind of the customer. The profits reaped by Japa-
nese firms since the export boom began are a sufficient proof
that the low sale prices of Japanese goods do not constitute
“dumping” in the accepted sense of selling below the cost of
production. It is true, of course, that certain special indus-
tries in other countries have been adversely affected by inten-
sified Japanese competition. But if the interests of the
consumer are taken into account, the Japanese manufacturers
may well argue that they are performing a distinct service to
the world community. Whole populations, particularly in
colonial areas, have been enabled to buy low-priced goods
which they might otherwise have lacked during years of dire
economic stringency. For many Western exporters, more-
over, the rapid growth of Japan’s imports since 1932 has
opened up an important market for the sale of either raw
materials or manufactured products. An expansion of world
trade, no matter from what source, necessarily carries with)
it an excess of benefits. Far from being a menace, Japan’:
trade recovery, from this standpoint, must be considered a
distinct gain for the world as a whole.

10

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November 7, 1934]

‘The Nation 529

.

From the point of view of the outside world, however,
one big question mark must be set against Japan’s trade re-
vival. Resting largely on currency depreciation, it not only
depresses the living standards of the Japanese workers but
forces competiters in other countries to adopt similar tactics.
It is, in other words, part and parcel of the disastrous trend
toward economic nationalism for which the principal com-

mercial countries, including the United States, are jointly
responsible. ‘This process hinders the reestablishment of
world monetary stability and strengthens the general ten-
dency now evident for capitalist rationalization at the expense
of the workers. Further intensification of international com-
petition in the world markets on this unhealthy basis may
well lead to economic chaos and war.

Last Look at the Campaign

By RAYMOND GRAM SWING

Washington, October 29

HE campaign ends with the Democrats in a slightly

more favorable position than after the Maine elec-

tion. ‘Then they were happy with the prospect of
losing not more than twenty-five to thirty seats in the House
and of making a net gain of six in the Senate. Now they
expect to lose not more than twenty in the House, and to
vain eight or nine in the Senate without dropping a single
Democratic Senator.

The Administration will have the best of both worlds
at the polls. It will get nearly the entire left and center
vote. It will lure a goodly number of conservatives with the
new spirit of graciousness to business now pervading the
White House. The left has no alternative to the New Deal,
and now conservatives are beginning to say they have no
effective alternative to the President when it comes to hold-
ing a radical country in check. It takes magic to produce
such a favorable political situation and the President has
done it. If it is deliberate strategy it is as brilliant as it is
unsound. It can be excused if the trial period for business
would have begun, election or no election. It is unsound
because obviously the President cannot lead both a radical
country and the conservatives who fear a radical country.
The President may not be deliberately playing both ends
against the middle, but he has marked the campaign with a
tinge of equivocation, and has somewhat befuddled the clar-
ity which existed when the campaign began.

Many close fights give the election an interest which it
otherwise would lack. First in excitement and importance
is the race of Upton Sinclair in California. The attack on
him has embraced the whole range of dishonesty from simple
lying to forgery. The State was flooded with handbills pur-
porting to be the indorsement of Sinclair by the Young Com-
munist League. No such league exists in California, and
Communists as such are as hostile to Sinclair as are conserva-
tives. The handbills were finally traced back to the office
of an attorney with a large corporation practice. The Re-
publican Attorney-General of Los Angeles County brought
action to disfranchise about 100,000 voters, charging false
registration, almost exclusively of persons in poor circum-
stances. The procedure he laid down involved the personal
appearance of each voter and the production of proof of
qualification. This would take months, and was meant to
rob Sinclair of a large body of votes.

In Washington I had the astonishing experience of
being told by an authoritative Democrat that Sinclair prob-
ably would lose and by an equally authoritative Republican
that probably he would win. I suspected wishful thinking

in both instances. ‘The President's tirm refusal to be drawn
even into left-handed support of the party’s candidate is de-
tended by the prevarication that the White House is keeping
out of local campaigns. But Sinclair expected no open in-
dorsement, certainly not as much help, say, as was given
Guffey of Pennsylvania. Guffey was invited to two White
House meals, and was able to tell White House corre
spondents that the President had authorized a power survey
in the State. ‘This might mean the expenditure of over
$50,000,000. This is the kind of vote-catching which, since
Maine, has infuriated the impoverished Republicans. “Uhe
President, in telling the newspapermen that he had not prom-
ised to help Sinclair, said it with such emphasis that he was
interpreted as meaning he had no intention of giving any
help. A few days later the unsavory Guffey got what Sin-
clair was not to have. The letter which came to Sinclair
headquarters from Postmaster-General Farley made it ap-
pear at first that Sinclair was at least to get the blue ribbon
of the party boss. But it was later explained that it was a
form letter with a facsimile signature, and that even the note
under the letter itself, handwritten in Mr. Farley’s particu-
lar green ink, was a facsimile, too, added to all form letters
to make them look more personal.

Reports from California indicate that Sinclair has lost
ground since the primary. His indorsement by the Ameri-
can Federation of Labor should mean that he will carry
San Francisco County. The support of the Utopians
might actually decide the election, for their numbers are
now reported as fantastically large, perhaps as great as
400,000. The assertion often made that even if elected
Sinclair will be powerless because of a hostile legislature is
denied by Sinclair’s friends. "They say that if he wins he
will also have a majority in the lower house. He then could
checkmate an obstructionist senate by free use of the refer-
endum.

The word from Wisconsin is that Senator La Follette
is ahead, but his brother will have a smaller vote for the
governorship. Senator Fess apparently is beaten in Ohio.
Senator Robinson in Indiana is enough on the defensive to
have campaigned during the last few weeks wholly on local
issues, after finding his attacks on the New Deal were not
popular. His reelection is in doubt. Senator Vandenberg in
Michigan made a similar change in tactics, and after begin-
ning with outspoken criticism of the New Deal, softened his
tone and found some things to praise. Unless there is a New
Deal landslide, his reelection is probable, and he then would
rank as one of the few eligibles for Republican standard
bearer in 1936.

3530 The Nation

[ Vol. 139, No. 3618

The President has tolerated an inference that he would
ike to see Bronson Cutting beaten in New Mexico by Rep-
resentative Chavez. Not only is Farley giving Cutting’s
opponent al! possible help in the interests of regularity, but
the President appears as sponsor of the drive. Senator Rob-
inson of Arkansas, as the Administration’s man in the Senate,
visited the White House to discuss the campaign and his own
participation in it. Leaving the President, he announced his
engagements as including two speeches against Cutting in
New Mexico. What other meaning could be given this than
that the President approved? Progressive Republicans will
have cantankerous words to say on partisanship when Con-
press meets.

‘To listen to the Republicans, the decisive factor in the
campaign is money, and the victory of the New Deal is being
bought solely with expenditures for relief, public works, and
crop restriction. Certainly many special payments have been
timed to count as much as possible at the polls. But the Re-
ublicans, while suffering from this disadvantage, suffer, too,

from not having a modern program to offer the country.
‘They are keenly aware of the costly time-lag in the present
party routine, causing the campaign of 1934 to be fought on
the repudiated platform of 1932. The Republican National
Committee did formulate a set of principles for this year, but
these are not authoritative, and are timorous and vague.
They bind no candidate, and they are not forceful enough
for these abnormal times.

The impression in Washington is that the New Deal in
some specific details is losing ground in the country, yet the
President, if anything, is more popular than ever. But his
strength is due in part to the vacuum left in political life bs
the absence of an organic opposition. So long as a Repub
lican Party platform composed many months before the crisis
of 1933 is forced into use, and no one can bind the Re-
publicans to anything more timely, the one-sideness of the
campaign is almost inevitable.

{[Mr. Swing contributes a regular weekly letter from

Washineton. |

Fascism at Columbia University

By A SPECIAL INVESTIGATOR

ECENT events in Europe have again focused the at-
tention of the American press on Italy. Compulsory
military training for eight-year-old boys, Mussolini’s

insistence upon militarism, and his provocative challenge to
Jugoslavia have recently aroused unfavorable comment in
journals which last year had almost forgotten that Italy was
the model upon which Hitler based his government by mass
murder.

The visit to this country of 350 Italian students, many
of them prominent athletes, was, of course, a propaganda
move designed to win the friendliness of American university
students to the fascist cause. With this fact in mind, it is
refreshing to note that the Columbia Spectator, the student
newspaper, carried on October 5 an editorial calling upon
President Butler to take the same courageous, liberal stand
against fascism which his colleague, President Conant of Har-
vard, took in the Hanfstangl incident. The same issue of the
Spectator carried a front-page article by Sir Anthony Jenkin-
son, former Oxford student editor, deploring the apathy and
inertia of American universities in regard to fascism.

The apathy and inertia which Sir Anthony deplores is
nowhere better illustrated than in Columbia University itself.
Presided over by one of America’s leading liberals, Columbia
should be the center of a campaign against all forms of fascist
intolerance. In fact, President Butler only last spring, in a
brilliant speech before the American Woman’s Association,
pointed out the dangers of fascism and communism and made
a plea for a militant defense of American democratic ideals.
Thus it is rather surprising that Dr. Butler says nothing
about, and therefore presumably is not aware of, the subtle
fascist propaganda within the walls of his own university.
The center of this propaganda is the Casa Italiana. ‘The
Casa, a handsome seven-story building, is an integral part of
the university, as are the library, the college, and the law
It is the home of the activities of the Italian Depart-
And vet it has become an unofficial adjunct of the

school.

ment.

Italian Consul-General’s ofhce in New York and one of the
most important sources of fascist propaganda in America.
Let us observe at the outset that while German Nazi propa-
ganda has been for the most part clumsy and obvious, Italian
fascist propaganda has been subtle and elaborate.

No liberal can quarrel with the principle that Columbia
University must permit all varieties of political opinion, in-
cluding fascism, to be freely expressed there. The Casa
Italiana has consistently violated this principle, however, by
refusing to permit, within its walls or in its publications, any
expression of opinion at variance with fascist doctrine. In
spite of definite attempts on the part of unbiased students,
outstanding Italian liberals such as Count Sforza, Gaetano
Salvemini, now a visiting professor at Harvard, and Gugli-
elmo Ferrero have never been invited to speak at the Casa
Italiana. ‘he Casa nas several rooms for Italian visitors to
this country, but none except Fascists have been housed there.
Most of the furniture for this center of fascist propaganda
was donated by the Italian government.

It is not generally known that Giuseppe Prezzolini, the
present director of the Casa Italiana, was in the days before
fascism a crusading liberal. As editor-in-chief of the Voce,
an Italian periodical published in Florence between 1908
and 1916, he attacked the corruption of the reactionary and
demayogic regime of the period to such an extent that he was
known throughout literary and political Italy as /’uomo puro,
“the incorruptible.” A good part of the activity of Prezzo-
lini and his associates on the Voce consisted of attacks on the
intellectual bombast of the pre-war nationalist movement,
which later became the very keystone of the present fascist
doctrine. Among the collaborators on the Voce were Bene-
detto Croce, the noted philosopher, Gaetano Salvemini, now
in exile in America, Amendola, a courageous liberal who was
killed by the Fascists for his part in the Aventine opposition
after the murder of Matteotti in 1924, and Giovanni Papini,
the author of “The Life of Christ.” All these men, with

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the exception of Papini, remained true to their liberal princi-
ples. Prezzolini, after the March on Rome in 1922, avoided
taking a definite position until the summer of 1933, when he
expressed outspoken fascist sympathies in an Italian news-
paper article reproduced in the Italian American review
Atlantica.

Despite Prezzolini’s early record of liberalism, an at-
tempt was made by an instructor in the Italian Department
of Columbia University to link the Voce and Prezzolini to
fascism in a doctoral dissertation entitled “On the Threshold
of Fascism.” The purpose was to create out of whole cloth
the myth that Prezzolini was the precursor of Mussolini and
that the Voce had been of invaluable aid in preparing the
intellectual foundations of fascism. Nothing, of course,
could be farther from the truth. The author of the disser-
tation, Peter M. Riccio, now an assistant professor in the
{talian Department at Columbia, acknowledges in his preface
*rofessor Prezzolini’s “unlimited hospitality and liberal do-
nation of material.” It is therefore clear that Prezzolini was
sware of and participated in this hoax. Professor Riccio’s
contribution to contemporary Italian culture was exposed
several months ago in La Stampa Libera, a New York inde-
pendent Italian newspaper, and in a pamphlet written by two
Italian exiles, Carlo Rossi and Antonio Marchi, entitled “An
Academic Scandal at Columbia University.” This pamphlet
properly asserted that “‘it is impossible . . . to understand how
Columbia University can approve of such a travesty on
scholarship, on good taste, and on intellectual decency and
honesty.” It declared that Professor Riccio’s book, “fraudu-
lent in conception and execution, could not have borne the
imprimatur of a university unless special pressure was at
work.” With incontrovertible evidence it brought out the
equivocal structure upon which the dissertation rested, and
declared it “one of the worst and most disgraceful disserta-
tions ever written in the history of higher education,” reveal-
ing astonishing ignorance of Italian affairs and of elementary
standards of scholarship.

What was the special pressure? Why should Professor
Riccio have been interested in writing a book in which every
standard of intellectual honesty had been subordinated to a
definite effort to exalt Prezzolini, to reconstruct his past,
and to praise the fascist movement? “On the Threshold of
Fascism” was only the first in a long series of incidents which
can leave no doubt in the mind of an unbiased observer that
the Italian Department at Columbia is dominated by fascist
influence.

After the erection of the Casa Italiana, largely through
funds contributed by the Italian Americans of the metro-
politan district, the head of the Columbia Italian Depart-
ment, Professor Dino Bigongiari, an avowed fascist, sought
to intrench fascist influences in the conduct of Italian studies
at Columbia University. He first invited Giuseppe Prezzo-
lini to come to Columbia as a visiting professor. Prezzolini
was a free-lance journalist after his editorship of the Voce,
and for several years after the war had been a book-seller
and press agent. Professor Bigongiari’s subordinate, Mr.
Riccio, then prepared the dissertation referred to above on
the Voce and Prezzolini’s work. In theatrical parlance this
method would be known as a “build-up.” A few months
after the appearance of this book Prezzolini was made direc-
tor of the Casa and a full professor of Italian, Riccio was
made an assistant professor, and Bigongiari remained as head

‘The Nation 53]

of the department and as the real power in carrying out
fascist ideas. ‘he same Professor Riccio was secretary of the
committee in charge of arrangements for the visit of the
Italian university students to this country, and on October 23,
1934, he was presented with a medal by the Italian govern-
ment for his services in its behalf. There is an intimate as
sociation and regular correspondence between the Italian
Embassy at Washington, the Italian Consul-General’s office
in New York, the office of the Fasci all’Estero of Rome.
which has charge of fascist activities abroad, and the Casa
Italiana.

The relation of the Casa to its students is a most ques-
tionable one. Student gatherings for the purpose of discuss-
ing aspects of fascist rule are forbidden; a critical attitude of
mind among students is discouraged. The professors have
the power of withholding higher degrees in their department
from students who view contemporary Italy with an open
mind. One of the most important activities of the Casa is
an educational bureau. Its head is Leonard Covello, a high-
school principal who serves as the henchman of the Casa
fascist group in the city high-school system. The real pur-
pose of the bureau is to instil Italian nationalism into the
Italian population of New York. This is done by means ot
a speakers’ division which, manned in part by graduate stu-
dents of Italian descent at the university, goes into the Italian
quarters of the city and pleads for adherence to Italian cus-
toms and fascist ideals. Tor the maintenance of this bureau
and other Casa activities the Italian Consul-General of New
York last year contributed $3,000. The policies of the Casa
have alienated almost all the men who contributed money
toward its erection. Its deficit, at present, amounts to more
than $50,000.

The official publication of the Casa is the Jtaly-4 merica
Monthly. ‘This publication is the result of a merger of the
monthly of the Italy-America Society and the Casa Italiana
Bulletin, formerly an autonomous monthly issued by the
Casa as an organ for the expression of student and faculty
opinion. The present monthly is frankly fascist in character,
and in its nine months of existence has not carried a single
controversial article. Its leading article has consistently been
written by Beniamino de Ritis, an officer of the Italy-
America Society and a fascist propagandist who is not affii-
ated with Columbia University. Each of De Ritis’s articles
has taken up some aspect of the fascist state. It need not be
asked whether or not Mr. de Ritis approached his subject
with a critical mind. One may wonder what interest the dis
interested American student of Italian culture or politics can
take in such a publication.

Using a part of a great American university as an agency
of a foreign government should obviously not be permitted.
The situation at Columbia is possible only because of igno
rance of Italian affairs or general indifference to them. Con-
sidering the number of competent scholars in the Italian field
it is difficult to see why a foreign journalist should have to
be imported for the purpose of teaching Italian culture in
this country. Now that the facts are known concerning the
betrayal of a semi-public trust by a few men, the intrusion
of foreign political influences in American universities should
not be tolerated. In view of the irrefutable evidence linking
the Casa Italiana with fascist propaganda, President Butler
would do well to make a thorough and impartial investiga
tion of this unwholesome situation.

532 The Nation

[ Vol. 139, No. 3618

Taxation in the New Social State

IV. State Finance

By M. SLADE KENDRICK

EHIND the current issues of American State finance
lie past policies the effects of which reach into the
present, deepen its difficulties, and thereby emphasize

the need for fundamental changes. From 1922 to 1929
State expenditures, which ordinarily comprise from 13 to 15
per cent of all governmental expenditures in this country,
expanded under the smile of a prosperity which, however de-
ceptive it may seem in retrospect to have been, appeared genu-
ine at the time. In 1922 the States spent in round numbers
$1,280,000,000; in 1929, $2,061,000,000. This was a re-
markable increase in public expenditures for a period of eight
years. And not all these expenditures were for current gov-
ernmental services. An increasing proportion of them—32
per cent in 1929 compared with 17 per cent in 1922—were
outlays for permanent improvements which could yield their
incomes of service only in time. “Thus, while the number of
private automobiles and new houses and the amount of other
private capital goods were increasing, the mileage of hard
roads and the number of parks, public buildings, and other
3oth pub-

long-time public enterprises were also increasing.
lic and private enterprise were spending in the present for
the sake of the future.

All this spending both for current services and for pet
manent improvements might have been a provident garnering
for the public need from the lavish output of private enter-
prise if it had not been for the method of financing it. Al-
though rates of existing taxes were increased and some addi-
tional sources of taxation were developed, the ensuing gains
to the public revenue were insufficient to finance the expanded
program of State activities. Resort to borrowing became
veneral. Only a few States resisted the*temptation to spend
now and pay later. The net debt of the States rose from
$834.000,000 in 1922 to $1,690,000,000 in 1929, and the
annual interest payment increased during the same period
from $41,000,000 to $94,000,000. Thus, at the onset of the
depression, State revenues were burdened with the heavy
innual carrying charge of 1 greatly increased public debt.

The effect of the depression on the financial systems of

ites was relatively small at first. The trends of the
ity period continued for a time. State levies on prop-
rty were cut in response to the continued demand of the
depression-ridden farmers for a reduction in their taxes, while
rates of taxes collected in the main from urban sources were
raised and some new taxes were introduced. Expenditures,

} continued to grow more rapidly than revenues, and

lOWeVEr,
in two vears the net debt of the States increased by another
£300,000,000. ‘Thus the mortgaging of both present and fu-
ture income to debt service continued.

Even so, if the depression had ended in 1931, State
finance might have pursued its care-free way with a relatively
small disturbance. Recovery would have postponed the reck-
oning. But the economic sky turned darker to the accompani-
ment of falling prices, bankruptcies, a cracking international
financial structure, mounting unemployment, and yrowing

distress. Revenues which had formerly held up began to fail
in supply. Even levies of the property tax, once a sure source
of money, began to be followed by an alarming total of de-
linquencies. And to make matters worse, the need for rev-
enue increased because some provision had to be made at once
for the relief of the unemployed. Private charity and mu-
nicipal relief had broken down. The States had to take over
part of the relief burden. So desperate was the situation that
they could not cope with it, and soon the federal government
was forced to come to their rescue by assuming the greater
part of the relief expenditures in all the States and the whole
of these expenditures in some States.

Under the accumulating stress of failing revenues and
increased expenditures, salary cuts became general and de-
creased appropriations to State institutions the rule. Allo-
cations to local units for educational and other services were
cut drastically in many States, and the burden of relief, as
already indicated, was passed on in large part to the federal
government. Despite these economies, some of which were of
questionable wisdom, budgetary deficits grew larger. In
some States these could not be financed by bond issues be-
cause of constitutional restrictions; in most States, because of
a decline in their credit rating.

The States, therefore, have gone far afield in their search
for revenue. Emergency levies have been added to the regu-
lar imposts of certain taxes. Eighteen States have adopted
the general sales tax since 1929, and an equal number the
chain-store tax. Since 1929 twelve States have introduced
the personal income tax, and eleven the taxation of amuse-
ments. In 1933 ten States introduced the taxation of bet-
ting. Repeal offered another source of revenue. Twenty-
four States have passed laws taxing spirits, and thirty-nine
have provided for the taxation of beer and wine. These ad-
ditional sources of State taxation are mostly levies on thie
consumption of the masses. Need for revenue prepared their
way. But however fully that need may justify their impo-
sition in the present emergency, not all these taxes should be
continued as permanent sources of State revenue. Yet in
practice it is difficult to discontinue the levy of a tax.

Thus, in its large outlines the general financial situa-
tion of the American States inspires neither praise for past
performance nor optimism for the future. The record speaks
of poor financial management, and is even more dismal for
collective than for private enterprise because of the greater
number that must share responsibility. The matter in point,
however, is not appraisal of State finance but a consideration
of what should and can be done about its problems.

The general financial problem of the American States
is threefold: to maintain the services of government, includ
ing those resulting from the depression; to pay interest and
principal charges on the debt; and to reorganize State public
finance so as to prevent a recurrence of the present fiscal
emergency. Of these problems the first two are of immediate

importance.

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‘The Nation 533

The traditional solution of a financial difficulty, public
\r private, is to spend less. This solution has already been
ipplied by the States. Hence, if it is to mean anything at
present, it must mean either a further curtailment of the or-
linary services of government or, except as federal relief is
supplied to replace it, a disregard of the needs of the unem-
ployed. Reduction in State expenditures by either of these
methods would not be in the public interest.
A more practical consideration is that it cannot be done.
lhe social philosophy that government is to act rather than
restrain, to provide rather than to withhold, was estab-
lished before the depression. As need on need has pressed for
recognition, this philosophy has become intrenched. And
liough emphasis on the sphere of governmental activity may
vary, a popular return to the economic philosophy of indi-
vidualism and laissez faire is no more probable than a return
to the means of transportation of a hundred years ago.
Expenditures for debt service cannot be reduced with-
out the destruction of State credit. A few States may be
ible to refund some bond issues into others bearing lower
rates of interest, but this is not the general situation. For
most States the debt is a burden the annual cost of which
cannot be lessened save by the slow process of reducing
the principal. This burden has been accepted by practically
ill the States. Indeed, many have repudiated obligations
to their employees and to their citizens generally in order to
neet the interest on their bonds.
The present need of the States, social and economic, is
clearly for more money in their treasuries. It ought to be
ossible to recommend that in this emergency the revenues of
he future be drawn upon through the device of borrowing.
ut as has been indicated, present and future revenues are
ilready mortgaged heavily. Hence this suggestion cannot be
offered as a general solution of the problem. A few States,
however, still have excellent credit. For these, borrowing
for part of their requirements would seem a sound policy.
In recommending additional taxation, the writer is
aware that the new sources discovered by State legislatures in
recent years limit the possibilities that remain. Nevertheless,
some sources of additional revenue are still untapped. ‘The
personal income tax offers considerable possibilities of rev-
enue in States that have not yet adopted it. Where consti-
tutional restrictions prevent adoption of this tax, they should
be removed. Unfortunately, this will be a difficult task in
some States owing to the rigid structure of their constitutions.
But never was there a time more favorable for the breaking
of barriers than now. ‘This opportunity should be used.
States that already levy personal income taxes could raise ad-
ditional revenue from this source by a revision of rates and
personal exemptions. Although the progression of State in-
come-tax rates is limited by the opportunity that wealthy
persons have of moving from a State of high taxation, more
progressive rates could be levied in some States. In most
States some rates in the income-tax schedule could be raised.
Personal exemptions are generally high; these should be low-
ered greatly. Much has been said in recent years about
“broadening the base of taxation.” This argument has been
commonly used in justification of the levy of a general sales
tax. The base of taxation may, however, be broadened in a
much fairer way by a tax that considers differences in income
than by a tax that is levied upon rich and poor alike at the
same rate. But in recommending greater use of the personal

income tax, it is recognized that a personal income-tax law
does not enforce itself. “Che success of such a tax depends
largely on the quality of its administration. The minor
sources of taxation, amusements and tobacco, offer some pos-
sibilities of revenue. Less than one-half of the States tax
amusements, and less than one-third tax tobacco. It would
appear that in these dark days non-essentials might be taxed
to supply essential public services to all and the necessaries
of life to those in distress.

Although not so immediately pressing, the problem of
reordering public finance in the States so as to prevent a
recurrence of present financial difficulties is of great im-
portance in the long run. First of all, State taxation policy
should be adjusted to the business cycle. It is not necessary
to forecast the coming of a depression in order to prepare
for one. All that is necessary is to recognize that depressions
come and to act accordingly. Tax rates should be kept high
in the next period of prosperity and debts should be paid.
If this course is followed, it is safe to predict that after full
allowance for any difference in severity, State finance will
weather the next depression better than it has come through
the current one. Furthermore, each State should develop the
best State tax administration possible. There is nothing mys-
terious or accidental about efficient tax administration. It
can be had by any State that wants it; it gives an annual
reward in years of prosperity and in a period of depression
offers assurance that such revenue measures as may be adopted
will have at least as great a degree of success as tax admin-
istration can give them.

Reform of local government is yet another means toward
the end sought. State finance can never be on a sound basis
until local finance is also. Elimination of local waste, in
efficiency, and improvident financing would strengthen the
tax base for State as well as for local government. Such re
form would be most helpful in the present plight of State
government, but unfortunately it cannot be accomplished
in time to afford much relief during the current depression.
A beginning could, however, be made now on the basis of
the excellent studies that have been made in this field.

Another fundamental measure needed for the reforin of
State finance is a thorough revision of the tax structure.
State taxes are now levied at one extreme on vague and gen-
eral principles, at the other on practical issues only. Taxation
in the individual States exhibits little plan, and State taxa-
tion as a whole is full of burdensome provisions by which
each State seeks revenue regardless of the claims of other
States. What is needed in each State is the development of a
system of taxation whereby the taxes imposed would be in
close adjustment to the purposes that account for their levy.
The constructive purposes for which the revenues of the
modern State are expended should be recognized in its tax
system. What is needed generally is the adoption of certain
principles of interstate comity in taxation, so that equities in
property, business, and incomes that cross State lines wil!
no longer be burdened because of the interstate character of
the ownership. Individualism among States serves the com-
mon good no better than individualism among persons.

[ This is the fourth of a series of ten articles on taxation,
planned and edited by Professor Paul Studenski. The fifth,
Local Finance, by Philip H. Cornick, of the New York State
Commission on the Revision of Tax Laws, will appear in
the issue of November 21.}

The Nation

| Vol. 139, No. 3618

LTii the newspapers reporting increasing violence

in various American communities, it should be val-

uable to analyze the civic temper and intellectual
atmosphere in a town which is not in the spotlight. For in
communities as in individuals the maladjustments and cumu-
lative irritations of today are the violences of tomorrow.
Wichita, a bewildered Middletown
are growing steadily more

Consider, then,
whose 6,000 families on relief
hopeless and resentful, whose labor movement is rapidly stif-
fening, whose intellectuals are moving leftward along with
their kind everywhere, whose conservatives are angry and a
hit frightened. On the surface everything is so quiet that
Wichita appears only slightly perturbed by the depression.
But the quietness is deceptive, for beneath it tensions are
increasing daily and must continue to increase so long as the
business and political leadership of the town maintains its
present rigidity in defending the status quo.

How little elasticity of opinion there is in this leader-
ship I may show by sketching a series of recent amusing epi-
odes. Strung together, they constitute either a beautiful
plot for comic opera or a brief for the Jeremiahs who see in
them the first rumblings of approaching fascism. Needless
to say, they have not been featured by the Wichita press.

For one of the funniest we are indebted to our extraor-
linarily alert D. A. R. When a few years ago they noticed
that the trafic squads of school children were using red flags
to halt traffic, the Daughters were simply horrified. Imine-
liately they procured green flags for the squads’ use. And
now whatever habit-jolt we suffer from putting on the
brakes at the sight of a green flag is more than compensated
for by the knowledge that our children are saved the perni-
cious psychological influence which would inevitably result
trom constantly seeing and handling the flag of Moscow. If
only some great national organization would rise to its duty
ind point out to the railroad systems and the Catholic church
the harm they do in using this iniquitous color!

But a gesture of that sort, no matter how noble, is not
compared in effectiveness with the day-by-day carnest-
ness of a group of citizens who are at or near the center of
It is hardly a coincidence that most

|
lo be

the town’s civic life.
of the busier of them have military connections, are officers
in the reserves, prominent in the Legion, or officially con-
nected with the local National Guard unit. Many of them
belong to the Sojourners’ Club, that interesting organization
of Masonic reserve officers which in Wichita, at least, serves
teering committee for all patriotic activities.

One of the important functions of the group is to pre-
vent any of the nation’s celebrities popularly supposed to be

tainted with either radicalism or pacifism from speaking in
Wichita. When, for instance, one of the Y. M. C. A. clubs
two years ago invited Sherwood Eddy to the city, the patri-
ots moved heaven and earth to prevent his talking. Their
efforts were only partly successful. The students of the
municipal university were protected from him, but his back-
ers found him a church where he could address a mass-meet-
ing. ‘The darkest forebodings of the patriots were realized

Conflict Not in the Headlines

By AVIS D.

CARLSON

when during the course of his speech Mr. Eddy remarked
that he would never support another war and that there were
some good things to be said for the Russian experiment, thus
proving himself a treasonable citizen and a rabid Communist.
After the meeting the secretary of the Y was invited to
appear before the Sojourners’ Club and was there repri-
manded for his part in contaminating the civic life with the
presence of a person like Sherwood Eddy.

Public spirit of that sort must have its effect upon
the community as a whole. Some time after the Eddy inci-
dent the City Teachers’ Association brought Glenn Frank to
town for a lecture. The patriots were terribly concerned.
But imagine their indignation when the Wisconsin alumni ot
the University Club proposed that the club should give a
dinner in his honor. Several members leaped to their feei
and threatened to resign on the spot if the club should so
disgrace itself. When it was learned that the Chamber of
Commerce was making plans to have Mr. Frank address a
luncheon meeting for them, pressure was brought to bea:
upon the program committee and Mr. Frank was bluntl;
wired that his presence was not desired. And to cap the
incident, the Superintendent of Secondary Education was
roundly rebuked for his guilt in allowing the teachers t
bring the Wisconsin fomenter of revolution into the town.

Recently a joint committee of the American Association
of University Women, the Young Women’s Christian Asso
ciation, the League of Women Voters, and the Christian
Youth Council (hothead organizations, all of them!) spon-
sored a two-day visit of Paul Harris, a “paid agitator” (1
heard those words actually used) of the National Council for
the Prevention of War. Immediately the American Legion
got into action to prevent his coming. When they found the
sponsoring groups could not be deterred, they turned their
attention to the Board of Education. In the end Mr. Har-
ris was not permitted to speak before any public-school
group. Presumably the tender minds of high-school and
university students must be protected from discussion of suchi
subjects as comparative disarmament and the peculiar neces-
sity for peace in the modern world of machines.

Last winter a group of ministers, college professors,
teachers, Y secretaries, and clubwomen sponsored the lec-
ture course of the League for Industrial Democracy. On
the program were Harry Laidler, Professor Edward Berman
of the University of Lllinois, James Yard, Professor S. D.
Myres, editor of the Southwest Review, and Norman
‘Thomas. When the sponsors petitioned the Board of Educa-
tion for permission to hold the lectures in a high-school audi-
torium, the board committee which controls the use of tlie
buildings refused in a tart letter stating that it was the fixed
policy of the board to allow a school auditorium to be used
only for educational or cultural programs and that this series
of lectures came under neither classification!

Most of the civic “boards’—the Community Chest, the
Y. M. C. A., the city commission, the University of Wichita
and so on—contain outspoken red-baiters and pacifist haters
But in many ways the situation in the Board of Education |

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The Nation

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he most alarming to citizens with liberal tendencies. One
f the most influential members of the board is a retired lieu-
nant colonel who is now district manager of the Kansas

and Electric Company, the local unit of the Electric

nd and Share network. Another member, a major in the
rves, is a lawyer but is best known locally for his promi-
With such a vii

t pair of patriots on the board any subversive tendencies

nce in various military organizations.

ong school teachers are fairly sure to come to light. Last

iter what should turn up but a veritable attempt to intro-

e Russian propaganda among the students of the high
hool through the medium of the high-school division of
he Y. M. C. A.

It happened in this wise. Unable to find a Bible at the
nute, the teacher sponsoring the “Hi-Y” gave the student
irged with “leading devotionals” a little book of quota-
ns compiled by David Porter, a national figure in the
M. C. A.
ut the brotherhood of man and the true nature of Chris
nity. Was it then only by chance that the student should
id a paraphrase of the Good Samaritan story in which a

In the book were scores of innocuous sayings

n of color going down the pages of history is set upon and
aten, passed indifferently by an Englishman going to take
p the white man’s burden, tossed a coin by a philanthropic
\merican, and at last succored by a Russian Communist who
bound up his wounds and made him a partner in his enter-
rise”?

The patriots knew that more than mere chance was
volved. At once they saw the incident in its true light, a
letail in a great plot of the Y. M. C. A. and the schools to
verthrow the government by corrupting the minds of our
future citizens. Vigorous measures were taken. Our major
made a ringing plea to the Board of Education to withhold
the contracts of the two principals, the one because the
acident had occurred at his school and the other on the
eneral suspicion of radicalism. Action on the contracts was
leferred for a month, but in the end the patriots voted with
the rest of the board to rehire the principals. The major,
wever, issued a vigorous statement to the effect that he
oped the erring school men would consider themselves on
robation this coming year, for in another year he would
iise “a real howl” if they continued to “do their thinking
it loud.”

During a recent uprising on the part of the unemployed
‘cause their relief had been cut to a below-subsistence level
for a period of five weeks, it was no accident that the liveli-
st, most indignant supporters of “law and order” came from
mong the patriots. It was also no accident that when the
inemployed were dispersed from an orderly meeting by tear
mbs and the National Guard, the liberals watched with
ympathetic eyes. For perhaps the first time in their com-

fortable lives they had a real fellow-feeling for a group of
cial outcasts.

The forces all around are tightening. Today a genuine
rganization of the unemployed is in formation. The labor
inions, which have never had any militancy in Wichita, are
ichieving a new solidarity. The “intellectuals” have no

rganization whatever, but the town is so small that they
\| know each other, and a whisper of gossip about any event
policy that affects their interest passes quickly among
them. Dissension is definitely growing in Wichita, and gen-
ne trouble mav not be far over the horizon.

In the Driftway

HE Tennessee Valley Authority, which is engaged in
the business of bringing the power age to some two
million persons in the vicinity of the new Norris

Dam, has been faced with a problem as unusual as it is pro-
found. One “Ras” Lindemood, a farmer in Union County,
‘Tennessee, finds his land located directly in the basin of the
dam. He is willing to accede to the government's plans for
establishing him somewhere else, but he stipulates that he
must not go so far that he cannot carry fire from his hearth
to his new home. His forebears came from Virginia in the
days of the early migrations across the mountains, and the
fire they kindled on the hearth of their Tennessee home has
been burning ever since. ‘Their grandson, “Ras,” means to
keep it burning.

* * * * »

HIS touching story moves the Drifter to one observation

that is particular and slightly melancholy, and to an-
other that concerns the human race as a whole. He won
ders first whether a beneficent government, in designing its
compact, neat, two-by-four cottages to house the fortunate in
habitants of the valley, has made any provision for hearth
fires at all. In an era of modern conveniences the electric
stove will undoubtedly take their place, and if the new houses
contain an cpen fireplace it will speedily degenerate into a
repository for cigarette butts in the winter and a jar of ferns
in the summer. It will no longer be needed for heat, light,
or culinary purposes. The old hearth fire will be displaced
by a miracle that is brought into the house on a wire, and
with it will come, to “Ras” Lindemood and his neighbors, a
new world, although not necessarily one that they will pre-

fer to the old.

+ * * a *

ORE generally considered, the story of the Tennessee

farmer and his fire indicates the two halves into which
the human race is divided. There are those who would keep
fire burning through generations, who behave as they do be-
cause their fathers before them behaved so, who are not only
bound but nourished by tradition. ‘These persons remode!
old houses, buy antique furniture, and keep an attic full of
old letters. (If they have no attic, as very likely they have
not, they yearn for one.) They not only prefer the world as
it is, unsatisfactory though it may be; they are terrified at
the thought that it may change suddenly. Consider how op-
posite are the other sort of people. They spent most of the
late nineteenth century in stamping out hearth fires. It is
true that many of these blazes gave little warmth, but one
suspects that the hearth is still colder now they are out. The
fire quenchers triumphantly did away with the church, they
administered a sad blow to the home, they threw doubts upon
democracy, and the profit system was bowed beneath the
weight of their scorn. Having cast these ashes to the winds,
they are busy kindling a new blaze, one that will set the
world on fire and carry with it the brightness of the mil-
lennium. Since he has reduced his discussion to these simple
metaphorical terms, the Drifter is almost afraid to confess
what in the beginning he was sure of—that he thinks himself,

530 ‘The Nation

| Vol. 139, No. 3618

on the whole, a tire carrier. As a Drifter should, he has been
in many parts of the earth and seen a good many different
kinds of people, but it was their likenesses that interested
him rather than their differences. He watched for his own
hearth fire burning in them, and almost always found it,
whether they were peasants or princes or priests. His more
impetuous friends will consider this heresy of the first water.
He warns them that if they ever succeed, as a sort of pun-
shment for this apostasy, in dragging him into their incendi-
ary business, he will join them not without regret. He will
he looking forward longingly to the day when the new fire
hall have died down a little. At his advanced age he is in-
| more warmth and less heat.
THe Drirrer

ned to preter

Correspondence
Mr. Berle on Mr. Corey

fo rue Eprrors or Tue Nation:

A. A. Berle’s review of Lewis Corey’s “The Decline of
American Capitalism” in The Nation for September 12 is writ-
ten in such a slipshod and contradictory fashion as to make one
suspect that Mr. Berle would like to be faithful to capitalism
ind to truth at the same time. Mr. Berle begins by sneering
it Marx and then draws a red herring across the trail by mak-
ing a distinction between politics and economics. “Marx was
mainly concerned with a political solution,” and “as an adjunct
to this he spent tremendous effort on a critique of the economic
ystem.” One would think that politics was in one world and
economics in another, and that Marx, by chasing a political will-
o’-the-wisp, had finally wandered into economics and stumbled,
n his dull, dogmatic way, on some neglected economic truths.
But what is the real connection between politics and economics?
(jo back to Adam Smith and you will find that his “Wealth of
Nations” was written as a phase of his inquiry into “those po-
tical regulations which are founded on expediency, and which
ire calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the pros-
perity Of a state.”

Now Marx succeeded in showing that quite apart from
the howling injustices of capitalist distribution the system was

unded on postulates logically so contradictory as to constitute
reat a defiance to nature and mathematics as a perpetual-
otion machine in mechanics. “The thing couldn’t work, not be-
“ise it attempted to exploit the workers, but because it at-
tempted to exploit them in a geometrical progression without
providing the purchasing power to permit cashing in on the ex-
ploitation. For pointing all this out Marx was called an un-
valanced crank, whereas the real cranks, the seekers after eco-
nomic perpetual motion, were honored as followers of natural
law in economu And now when Mr. Corey, on the basis of a
‘ainstaking empirical and quantitative study, verifies the con-
lusions which Marx derived from a critique of fundamental
ostulates, as well as presents a wholly original analysis of what
onstitutes the economics of capitalist decline, Mr. Berle dis-
misses his work as that of a bigoted dogmatist, “in the same
lass in economic matters as any fundamentalist proving the
literal accuracy of the Bible by geographical evidence.”

But Mr. Berle is not so blinded by his interest in capital
sm as not to see out of the corner of his eye that Marx and
Corey are somehow right. And so he says that Marx “guessed
right,” and that while Mr. Corey's work is to be “dismissed as
science,” his “conclusions are probably sound.” “These terrible
\l irxists must h ive an uncanny pull with Grod to he able to vet

true conclusions by following false scientific methods, while th:
orthodox economists who follow the true methods are somehow
unable to get these conclusions until the Marxists point them
out.

Mr. Berle gives a perfect Freudian betrayal of his moti
vations when he writes that economic adjustment means for Mr.
Corey “accepting an intolerable fascism or a communism whic
as he paints it, would seem to be almost equally intolerable.” |
have read Mr. Corey’s book from cover to cover, and nowhere
do I find him painting a picture of communist society, let alone
painting an intolerable picture of that society.

Mr. Berle concludes by commending the cultural values oi
capitalism. But the cultural values of capitalism exist only as
a negative quantity. Acquisitive industrial capitalism has not
created any cultural values, but it has progressively degrade
every one of the cultural values which were created before this
capitalism came into full operation. It has degraded art, it has
degraded the wonderful possibilities of science, it has degraded
the democratic, humanitarian dream, it has degraded even com
mon commercial honesty—and Mr. Berle’s case shows how it
has degraded intellectual honesty and sincerity as well.

New York, September 25 BENJAMIN GINZBURG

What Houghton Mifflin
Left Out

‘Lo THe Eprrors or THe Nation:

That was an interesting review by Mr. Villard on “Forty
two Years in the White House,” in The Nation for October 3
particularly regarding the divergences between the book and the
magazine versions. ‘The first quotation that he makes was
omitted from the book merely because we felt it was repetitious
In the second case, our quotation is exactly as it appears in th
manuscript, and we cannot find there the sentence that the Sar-
urday Evening Post puts in. The third quotation appears
the book as well as in the Saturday Evening Post. The fourth
quotation is given exactly as it appears in the manuscript
where there is no explanation as to the identity of “the third
party.”

Boston, September 30 R. N. Linscort

Berry and Tomato Picking

To tne Eprrors or THe NATION:

As a berry grower I was much interested in John Mac-
namara’s article on berry picking in The Nation for September
12. Like a good many other folks, he thought that farm
work was something which needed no preparation and no study,
no practice and no great skill. And he still thinks that, and
complains of the wages he was able to earn.

Down here on the Eastern Shore many of us still follow
the old custom of feeding our men, and twenty-five cents a day
will not feed them very well if we value the food at the cost
only of growing it. A few years back I had to get some unem-
ployed city help for picking tomatoes, paying them $2.50 per
day with room and board in addition. Several men in the
crowd could not pick more than six baskets per day, and I can
vet hear the sound of the tomatoes as they were crushed by
inexperienced feet. During that same season we had colored
farm men working for us who were making $3 per day at
3 cents a basket, were not missing any, and were not putting
in any green ones—just the difference between being an experi-
enced farm laborer and being an unemployed city man.

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November 7, 1934] The Nation 537

If our young friend John had stayed for the peach, apple, i s
and pear harvests, he could probably have made a pretty good he first book
living. Just one week is not a fair test for inexperienced labor.

He should go back for the pruning and other needed work, for frankly facing relationships

the country is lovely and he could make a living, even if he

had to live as did the early settlers. not even supposed to exist:

Betterton, Md., October 10 Evetyn Harris

lo tHE Epirors or THE NATION:
Armistice Day is proposed as a fitting time to make a col-

For the Persecuted The
lection for the tragic needs of those who are persecuted in the

land against which we fought. The sacrifice of the war dead

n their hope for democracy should challenge us to support
today those who suffer in Germany for their fidelity to religion, of the
democracy, and peace. Especially does it now seem a duty
for world Christendom to take energetic action to counter the

age-old recurrence of persecution of Jews; and also to stand
by the Christians, pacifists, “non-Aryans,” and others who suffer
. ’

for conscience’s sake.
As an immediate step in the world effort which should be

made, the Fellowship of Reconciliation is urging that collec-
tions be taken in churches and elsewhere between now and
Armistice Day. The Fellowship of Reconciliation will distrib- .

ute, or transmit to competent agencies, such funds as are sent
to it. The chairman of its relief committee in Europe is the
Reverend F. Siegmund-Schultze, formerly of Berlin, now at the
University of Ziirich. Gifts may be sent to the Armistice Fund,
The Fellowship of Reconciliation, 2929 Broadway, New York The contributors include Maspenet Mead, Robert L.
City. Dickinson, Ernest R. Groves, Mary Beard, Robert Morss

; : : Lovett, Lorinne Pruette, N. W. Ingalls Ernest W. Bur
au) or abe 3INS ‘OTT 1 _—
New York, October 1 Rossins W OLCoTt BARSTOW Morris L. Ernst, and Horace M. Kallen.
HENRY S. COFFIN

Epwarp L. Parsons
Francis J. McConnece
Ernest F. Titt.e

EDITED BY IRA S. WILE, M.D.

hysicians and psychologists have given specific informa-
tion and help to married persons with “legalized” sex lives.
But this is the first authoritative, popularly written counsel to
answer the problems of a group compelled to delay the
legal solution of their difficulties.

lt answers, frankly and courageously, such questions as:

Farm Loans

lo tHE Epirors or THe Nation: : pee ome Rave con experience efere

y ; — ‘ ‘ eae On purely etalnriaitn tn reason why tem
My attention has been called to the letter from Mrs. Mary ~ eo choenaed te ere Se aeen ae Spowete
E. Livesey, published in your issue of October 10, in which she Wnt te the average normal periodicity of sex + -- In
complains of the treatment accorded her by the Farm Credit | what are . yt hy to an unmarried couple in arousing, but

a "a ° : ees .— , ; ° ; | no ing, re? >

Administration. While Mrs. Livesey is very flattering to me What. problems gt couples whe delay marriage tor
personally, I cannot but take issue with her on her attitude. te ena ereertion ot’ legit are ,
She does not state all the facts connected with her case. The knowledge of contraception? eceepeness
Farm Credit Administration is doing a very constructive piece | > ‘a marriage ae aa po... _—
of work and has saved thousands of farms from foreclosure. intercourse more likely or Is it less Tikely to go to smash?

: , ¢] 95 When does normal “‘sex y”’ impinge upon the abnormal?
In the period from June 1, 1933, to June 1, 1934, $1,257,000,000 What percentage of unmarried persons indulge in auto-erotic
was loaned to farmers through the FCA, and through offices Can fundamental urges be repressed without a deleterious effect |
such as mine the indebtedness of farmers has been scaled down on one's ity?

Etc., etc.
to the extent of $39,000,000. : é |

Mrs. Livesey wished to borrow on unimproved land with- ete
out any farm buildings or dwellings and on land not under cul-
tivation. The Federal Land Bank of Springfield has very wisely
made a ruling that it will not make loans on unimproved land,
in order to prevent the federal funds appropriated for the pur- tease mail this to your bookseller or to: a2
pose of assisting farmers from falling into the hands of real- THE VANGUARD PRESS
estate speculators. It does make exception for land not under !00 Fifth Avenue, N. Y. C.

Gentlemen— Enclosed please find $........ for .. ©oples at $2.65 cach

cultivation, unimproved by buildings, if the land is uninhabitable, —(¢2.50 for each book plus 15 cents for postage and handling) of THE SEX
such as swamp-land. LIFE OF THE UNMARRIED ADULT. [) Please send €.0.D.

“A much needed, candid, and sane discussion of one of the most
f important social and moral problems of the day. The book
should create a real stir.” —HARRY ELMER BARNES

Jerome Waxman, Secretary-Treasurer, MADER. iecvccncesecvestevecssctnecscsocosees

Landis National Farm Loan Association ADDRESS.....
October 19

Vineland, N. J.,

Mhen writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

Labor and Industry

Scab City. I
Making Jersey City Safe

By ALFRED H. HIRSCH

N the outskirts of Jersey City one reads neat road

signs: “Make Jersey City the Safest Community in

the United States.” Perhaps when Steve Bodwich

and John Mulally were arrested in the Ukrainian Hall on

New Year’s Eve, 1931-32, and charged with “collecting

tunds for children of striking Kentucky miners,” this policy

was not in operation. In any case, the police entered a pri-

ite hall where the men were taking a collection by invita-
tion and made the arrests without warrants.

Albert Kovington, Edward Topp, and Cornelius E.
Klop, who went to police headquarters to make inquiries
ibout the charges against these men and to have bail set,
were given no information and were arrested shortly after
leaving police headquarters. It was three days before counsel
was able to free the five on writs of habeas corpus. When
the cases came up, the prosecution moved for dismissal, since
there was no charge against the prisoners. Judge Egan, who
recently stated that his views on labor disputes had been
“broadened and enlarged,” told the defendants to “get out.”
He added: “The judges will always cooperate with the Jer-
sey City police in keeping the streets of Jersey City clear of
trouble-makers.”

Frank Hague, perennial Mayor, brooks no opposition—
especially at election time. In the 1929 mayoralty campaign
he found himself up against an orator by the name of James
Burkitt, anti-Hague “Jeffersonian” Democrat, hailing origi-
nally from that citadel of freedom, Alabama, but long a resi-
dent of Jersey City. Burkitt was arrested many times during
the campaign thanks to the convenient Disorderly Persons
Act and the cooperation given to the Mayor by the police de-
partment. In spite of Burkitt’s efforts Hague was reelected,
although his majority was considerably smaller than it had
been four years before—and smaller also than it was in
1933. Burkitt has since migrated to Chicago, where he is
aid to hold a political job obtained for him by Jersey City
triends” who were eager to see him settled elsewhere.

One of the two local evening papers broke a long en-
during loyalty to the Hague organization by supporting Bur-
kitt throughout the campaign. For a time it lost its theater
idvertisements, but its owner, Judge Joseph A. Dear, a lay
member of the Court of Errors and Appeals, was obdurate.
the Havue administration retaliated by printing accounts of

S40)-a-day Dear.’ According to these stories, Judge Dear
valued his services to the State at forty dollars a day through-
wit the court term and including such holidays as Christmas,
Resides Mavor Harue, his critics included A. Harry Moore,
it that time a former Cjovernor only because of the New
lersey constitutional requirement of an intermission of three

rs between possible terms. Mr. Moore's ensuing 1931

hernatorial campaign was successful, and in 1932 he re-
pointed Judge Dear.
the Jersey Journal gives to Hague has been ill-defined and

Ta

Since that time such opposition as

takes the form of questioning doubt rather than statement.

Before and during the 1933 mayoralty campaign some
forty deputies of the Superintendent of Elections, all Republi
cans or anti-Hague Democrats, were arrested. George
Scharmer, for example, was arrested on Election Day afte:
he had objected to certain illegal practices at the polls
The duty of a deputy of the Superintendent of Elections is
to enforce proper procedure at the polls. Mr. Scharmer was
charged with “interfering with voters” and held for three
days with bail set at $3,500. During this time he was unable
to communicate with his wife, who was about to be delivered
of a child. He was held for the grand jury. No indict-
ment was found against him and he was released.

The day after Scharmer’s arrest William Noble, another
of the Fusion deputies of the Superintendent of Elections,
was arrested as he talked to an employee of the J. W. Greene
Company, where he had bought furniture shortly after his
marriage in December, 1932. He had previously walked
past the Fusion headquarters nearby to see what had hap-
pened to it since the elections the day before. He was “just
about to talk about the elections” when a Jersey City detec-
tive approached and asked: “What are you doing here?”

‘The officer then searched Noble and escorted him to the police

station. Here he was subjected to abusive language, during
the course of which one of the men said: “I’ve got a good
mind to take you down in the cellar.” He was then con-
ducted to another police station where he was fingerprinted
and photographed. He was held in jail for three days, but
when the case finally came up on May 13 he was immediately
discharged. Only the testimony of the man with whom he
had been speaking at the time of the arrest saved him from
being held on whatever charge the police might have chosen
to make against him.

The Mayor seems ruthless. Still, his Republican op-
ponents are not averse to pulling plums out of the public pie
whenever they can. One of them, William Sewell, for a
number of years held simultaneously the position of counsel
to the Republican Bureau of Elections in Jersey City and
that of corporation counsel of the city of North Bergen,
where his friend and former law associate, Julius Rich, is the
Democratic Mayor. He has only recently given up his labors
on behalf of North Bergen. Another Republican, Robert
O’Brien, formerly an outspoken leader of the opposition,
who used to describe the Mayor as one of the “most corrupt
men in the country,” forgot all his differences with him as
soon as he became secretary to the New Jersey State Racing
Commission. Since that time his public activities have con-
sisted solely in agitating for the restoration of horse racing
in New Jersey.

And neither Hague’s staunchest supporters nor Walter
E-dge’s Republican followers have ever disputed the strange
friendship existing between these two political enemies. Upon
numerous occasions they have been seen emerging wreathed in
smiles from private conferences in leading New Jersey hotels.

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November 7, 1934]

The Nation 539

The Tammany Hall of Jersey City not only objects to
open anti- Hague meetings and activities on the election front,
‘ut frowns on all assemblages which might tend to upset the
tand-pat functioning of city affairs. It is a law unto itself.
Last April Thomas Berry, a lifelong resident of Jersey City
ind a representative of the newly formed Civil Works As-
sociation, made up of relief workers who had CWA jobs,
hired a hall and arranged for speakers to address this or-
ranization. On the night of the meeting, April 16, police
were stationed at the door of the hall barring entrance.
[he next day a committee from the Civil Works Association
alled on John Malone, deputy Mayor, to protest and were
told by him that if they wanted to hold another meeting they
‘would have to see the chief of police for a permit.” Every
time they approached the owner of a hall they learned that
they could engage it only upon presentation of a police per-
mit. On May 4 Berry, accompanied by George B. O'Neill,
in investigator for the American Civil Liberties Union, went
to the Bergen Lyceum to attempt to rent the hall. A police-
man stopped them and O’Neill was ordered out of town.
Berry was warned by the officer that he would lose his relief
ob. Finally the American Civil Liberties Union, which
had contracted to supply speakers to the Civil Works Asso-
iation for several meetings, succeeded in renting a hall for
\lay 24. It was informed by the police that this meeting
would be broken up, and together with the Civil Works
Association it instituted injunction proceedings against Mayor
Hague and Director of Public Safety Thomas Wolfe.

An immediate hearing was held before Vice-Chancellor
John O. Bigelow. At this hearing the Jersey City authori-
ties, through counsel, promised not to interfere with the com-
ing meeting. In view of this promise A. J. Isserman, counsel
for the complainants§ agreed not to press the suit on the as-
surance from the couft that he could renew the application at
iny time if there was interference with any future meetings.

{e further insisted in open court upon the right of his clients
to criticize freely the conduct of the police and other Jersey
City officials. Protected by these pending proceedings, sev-

ral meetings were held without interference.

But the struggle against such tactics is not always so
successful. Albert Hoffman, Communist candidate for the
New Jersey Assembly in 1932, was arrested on July 9 of
that year two blocks from the police station, immediately
ifter he had called at the station to get permission to hold a
Communist meeting in a private hall. He was unable to get
ounsel to apply for a writ of habeas corpus until July 15.
On that very day the hearing came up and he was imme-
liately discharged. Needless to add, there was no meeting.

Although in most communities the charfe of vagrancy
signifies that the suspect has no local residence, this is not
the case in Jersey City, for on April 20, 1932, Joseph Green-
here was arrested for distributing leaflets and indicted as a
‘vagrant living at 109 Wayne Street, Jersey City.” Green-
here, as a matter of fact, had lived at this address for fifteen
ears and the property was owned by his parents. He had
heen distributing leaflets issued by the International Labor
Mefense, an organization which is not popular with the Jer-
ey City officials. He was given a ninety-day sentence. His
parents then obtained new counsel who promised to free him
without appeal. Greenberg was released but placed on pro-
bation for two years.

Nor is free speech the concern of the Jersey City autoc-

racy. Morris Langer, a leader of the Needle Trades Work-
ers’ Industrial Union who was murdered by thugs in 1933
in Chatham, New Jersey, was given a sentence of thirty davs
on April 16, 1931, because on April 9, at a street-corner meet
ing he “did utter loud and offensive language, to wit, ‘Down
with the A. F. of L’.””. Upon appeal to the Hudson County
Court of Common Pleas, the case was thrown out by Judge
‘Thomas H. Brown, who ruled that there was “no violation
of any act.” Jersey City police are noted for stopping cars,
searching and questioning all occupants, and arresting them
“on suspicion.”” Four men, Minerich, Borich, Rivers, and
Carethers, the last two of them Negroes, were arrested in
Jersey City when they asked the way to the Holland Tunne!
on October 15, 1933. All four were miners and left-wing
union leaders from Pittsburgh and West Virginia who were
going to New York to attend a meeting. “lwo days after
the arrests an attorney asked the desk sergeant what had
happened to these men and was informed that they had been
arraigned the day before and were out on bail. ‘The lawyer
was not satisfied with this answer, and upon further question
ing found that all four were still incarcerated. ‘They were
released on October 18 on bail of $1,000 each, charged with
“being in an auto, and having no legitimate business in Jer-
sey City,” in accordance with a law enacted in 1933. They
were subsequently convicted and sentenced to ninety days.
Shortly before, on September 17, 1933, Alexander Ivan
off, organizer of the Shoe Workers’ Industrial Union (since
amalgamated with some independent unions into the United
Shoe and Leather Workers’ Union), and three others were
going to a meeting during a strike against the 1. Miller Com

pany. ‘They were arrested en route and charged with “being

unable to give a good account of their presence in Jersey

City” and “with having no legitimate business in Jersey —

City.” The arresting officer testified that Ivanoff and the
others had admitted they were going to a union meeting. He
did not consider this legitimate business. The court agreed
with the policeman and sentenced the four men to six months
each on the basis of the 1933 law which had led to the con-
viction of Minerich and his companions. They were released
on $1,000 bail pending appeal. Their attorney meanwhile
presented arguments against the constitutionality of this law.
The Supreme Court of New Jersey finally ruled it unconsti
tutional, and the cases against Ivanoff, Minerich, Borich,
Rivers, Carethers, and many others were thrown out.

The action of the New Jersey Supreme Court consti-
tuted no redress since the arrests had hampered the strike.
This was the aim of the New Jersey authorities, as the fol-
lowing statement, quoted from the Jersey Journal of the day
after the Supreme Court decision, makes plain: “The high
court decision upsetting conviction under the 1933 Disor-
derly Persons Act will not deter Director of Public Safety
Thomas J. Wolfe in his determination to enforce the pro-
vision of that act to keep gangsters and undesirables [my
emphasis, A. H. H.] out of Jersey City, he declared today.”

Back in October, 1931, plain-clothes men entered the
Royal Spa restaurant and asked Irving Danovitz, an em-
ployee, to come out with them. He was forced into a waiting
car, where the men proceeded to beat him. Danovitz was
unaware that these men were detectives and therefore called
for aid. The police who arrived recognized his captors as
detectives of the Jersey City Police Department, and he was
taken to the police station, “pummeled, beaten, and clubbed

540 The Nation

[| Vol. 139, No. 3618

ill the way down,” and “yanked out bodily” upon arrival.
Here he was “cuffed around and beaten for about half an
hour.” He was then fingerprinted and placed in a cell with-
out the opportunity of notifying anyone until hours had
passed. He was completely unaware of the charge against
him until, just before he was put in a cell, he “heard the
detectives tell one of the superior officers at the police station
that he was one of a crowd who had been running a gambling
place.’ Danovitz had had no connection either direct or in-
direct with any establishment of this description and had
never been convicted of any charge or even arrested before.
No complaint was brought against him and he was released.

Jersey City, where reporters have difficulty in seeing
police blotters, where public financial hearings result in as-
saults as criticism is gagged, where all arrested individuals
are fingerprinted regardless of the charge against them, must
be made the “safest community in the United States.| Does
it matter that cars are stopped because they carry Negroes,
or contain men wearing caps? Does it matter that the oc-
cupants are jailed? Is Mayor Hague, whom Joshua Rin-
gle, Republican, in a “build-up” statement for his party issued
on June 28, 1934, calls the banker of “the firm of Kelly,
Milton, and Hague,” the insurance man of “the firm of
Armstrong, Milton, and Hague,” the lawyer of “the firm of
Milton and Hague,” the partner in the garbage-removal
business of “the firm of Scatuorchio, Malone, and Hague,”
to be allowed to run the city, with the help of the night
stick and at the expense of all who oppose him? Is picket-
ing to be classed as “interference with any person or persons
lawfully being upon the streets or public places” ?

The campaign of the Furniture Workers’ Industrial
Union and supporting organizations to uphold the simple
rights of workers to organize, to strike, and to picket can be
the first blow struck for decent conditions of labor and for
the constitutional rights of those who happen to pass through
the City of Perpetual Arrests.

| This is the second of two articles on the policies of
Vayor Hlaqgue in respect to the rights of labor, free speech,

and other important questions. The first appeared in last

Contributors to This Issue

T. A. Bisson is the Far Eastern expert on the research
taff of the Foreign Policy Association.

M. Stapk Kenprick is assistant professor of economics
and rural economy at Cornell University.

Avis D. Carison is the wife of a Wichita attorney. She
has written for Flarper’s, the North American Review,

and other mayazines

Acerep H. Hirscit is secretary of the National Commit-
tee for the Defense of Political Prisoners.

HANS CrristTiAN is the pseudonym of a Milwaukee news-
paperman

Louris Kronennercer has edited an anthology of light
verse which will be published ¢}

Lionet Aret has contributed to Pagany, the New World
Monthly, and other literary periodicals.

Rogert A\lorse, a New York artist, has written art criti

winter.

cism for the Symposium.
Rorerts Taprey is the author of “Harm’s Way.”

Kohler Wins

By HANS CHRISTIAN

HE Wisconsin labor movement received a dishearten

ing setback when an A. F. of L. union lost an ele

tion to the Kohler Company union. The Kobhile:

strike received the personal attention of William Green, and

once again he permitted himself to be cajoled and compro-

mised into defeat. Leading up to the strike was a year

of delays and evasions by State and national compliance

boards in the face of Kohler’s open defiance—delays too

easily accepted by the union. More than a year ago it had

a membership of 1,850 out of 2,500 workers. In the elec
tion it received only 643 to 1,063 unchallenged votes.

In fairness it should be stressed that the union tackled a

large job. It worked in virgin soil, with men who had grown
up in the tradition of the divine right of the boss; it not only
opposed one of the most impregnable open shops in the coun
try, but in so doing it left itself wide open to assault by pub
lic opinion. Again, it could not help the fact that the Na
tional Labor Board in one breath held Kohler guilty of viv
lating the Recovery Act, and in the next allowed his com-
pany union to enter an election on equal terms with th
labor union. ‘The strike leaders, moreover, were unawar
that the name of the company union would actually appea:
on the ballot until they saw it in printed form. The A. F.
of L. should never have allowed its members to vote on suc!
a ballot, but again it showed its “good-will.”

‘The labor leaders could not prevent Kohler, secure be
hind the barricades that surrounded the village and plant,
from resuming operation several weeks before the election.
There is little doubt which way the several hundred carefully
picked men who got jobs voted. Within the armed fort a
daily routine of half work, half picnic went on. Lollipops
and cigarettes were showered on the loyal employees. Noth-
ing was too good for them. Kohler shops became for a brief
time what they had been before in the popular imagination.

By chance, the election date fell two weeks after that
on which 250 men had been laid off in the pottery depart-
ment, the men who formed the backbone of the labor union.
The union’s four checkers challenged these of the 2,228
rapidly moving voters that they happened to know were
ineligible. Among them were not only all the office em-
ployees, many of the executives, all the foremen and super-
visors, draftsmen, and shop clerks, but also chambermaids
and porters from the company’s dormitory for single work
ers, Kohler’s private gardeners, employees of Kohler Village,
a game warden from a distant park, an aviator and mechanic
from the Kohler airport, and stable boys from the Kohler
private estate. The union challenged 368 voters; how many
slipped by is unknown. The company challenged 185 on
the ground of strike violence though not a single arrest
was made during the strike.

The election result was obviously embarrassing to the
two Labor Board judges. Somehow nothing seemed settled.
The strike continued. The full rancor left by the massacr«
persisted. Kohler remained the aloof paternal dictator who
issued terse, legalistic statements. The 643 who voted
against the company union appear to have forfeited foreve:
their chances of a job at Kohler.

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Books and Drama

It’s Fun to Be Immortal

Resurrection. By William Gerhardi.

Company. $2.50.

BOUT ten years ago Mr. Gerhardi published a delight-
A ful and successful novel called “Futility,” which all its

readers still remember. Nothing else one-half so good
has come out of his irresponsible imagination until the present
sparkling book, concerning which, nevertheless, a warning is nec-
essary. Before three pages have been passed one finds oneself
murmuring the name of Proust and remarking with an air of
great penetration that the author is apparently doing the same
thing with the methods and themes of the Frenchman that he
formerly did with those of the great Russians, whose tradition
he perverted to the uses of impudent comedy. So indeed he is;
but from page ten on he acknowledges Proust as his master, and
t is a bit disconcerting to be told straight out what one had
just congratulated oneself upon divining. An advertising man
would know better than to offend the reader’s amour propre in
this cruel fashion, but it is impossible to remain angry very long
with anyone as debonair as Mr. Gerhardi, whose flow of ani-
mal spirits and whose inexhaustible torrent of small talk may
be guaranteed to charm anyone not armed beforehand with an
unalterable opposition to frivolity in any form.

He tells us, to be sure, that he is not being frivolous, that
“Resurrection” is not a spoof. There is even a note on the fly-
leaf to assure us that the experience of which the book treats
“is, incredible as it may seem, a true experience.” Mr. Ger-
hardi really had determined to write a book which should do
for his own life what “Remembrance of Things Past” had done
for Proust’s. He really had become convinced that life was
nothing until it was over and that experience was meaningless
until it had been all gathered together in that eternity of art
where all is simultaneous. What is still more important, he
really did come to himself one morning to discover that some
sort of astral double was wandering freely away from the body
lying inert on the bed, and by this experience he really did reach
the joyous conviction not only that man is immortal in a literal
sense, but also that he will spend at least a part of his eternity
in contemplating his life as a work of art.

Perhaps we had better give Mr. Gerhardi the benefit of
the doubt. On the evening after the Great Discovery he went
to a dinner party, and when in all solemnity he announced to
his partner, “We do not die,” the only response he got was
“Pf!” It would be too bad if readers and critics should treat a
serious testament with similar irreverence, but one thing is
certain. However solemn Mr. Gerhardi may think he is being,
ultimate seriousness is not within the pleasant limitations of his
nature, and the whole adventure emerges from the telling as a
sort of polite farce. In the first place, the past which he re-
captures centers around the misadventures which arose on the
occasion when he went to North Africa determined to renounce
the world in company with a beautiful Arab wife whom no one
seemed able to supply. In the second place, his style perpetu-
ally turns into a graceful parody of Proust, whether that is
what he intends it to be or not. Take, for example, the passage
describing the state of one’s spirits on arriving at a dinner party:

Harcourt, Brace and

In these first twenty minutes before going in to din-
ner social courage is at its lowest ebb... . At this initial
stage, blurred by the light of chandeliers, feeling like an
asylum inmate led up with feeble grin and guilty step by
a kindly nurse for inspection by earlier arrivals, already
leaning back, grasping firmly their glass of sherry, against
the huge chimney piece and, you think, surveying you with

malignant curiosity; led up before strange women who
smile tentatively, and suddenly, as if on second thought,
otfer you their hand just the moment you have withdrawn
your own—at this first moment of arrival the late guest is
in a greater state of aberration than either before or since.

He cannot... cast a stern gleam of scorn at the company
and shout, “Cads and humbugs!” He cannot, because he

does not know which are the cads and which the humbugs.

Or, more characteristic still, the following from the account
of the ball:

Suddenly a fat old butler i6 knee-britches ran across
the whole length of a ballroom with a preoccupied air on
his face, stopping the band and automatically, as the music
stopped, clearing a center path all the length of the ball-
room. There appeared, as if to justify the working of
cause and effect, though as in the case of other natural
phenomena, such as thunder and lightning, we had seen the
effect before the cause—there appeared on the threshold a
royal pair.

The rhythm of the sentences is as unmistakably Proustian
as the subject matter, but one may still wonder if the latter ot
the two passages, especially, is deliberate parody or a sincere
imitation, which, because of the man behind the style, becomes
willy-nilly a burlesque even more delicate and more accomplished
than the literary burlesques of Max Beerbohm. In “Futility”
one was aware of a similar phenomenon. The book was a
Russian novel in which the parody was in part deliberate and in
part a result of the fact that the author's temperament made it
inevitable that he should see in terms of comedy what had been
mystery and terror to others. From “Resurrection” one gets
even more strongly the same impression. Mr. Gerhardi cannot
be serious no matter how hard he tries. Even on the subject
of immortality he cannot be other than exuberant and gay.
Temperament always wins the victory over conviction, and if he
is not consciously spoofing his audience, then he is unconsciously
spoofing himself. In any event “Resurrection” is delightful en
tertainment—frothy with the froth generated by a quick, rest
less, and genuine intelligence which is geared to nothing and so
spins round and round until it has beaten up everything into a
foam which weighs nothing yet sparkles with a thousand lights.
Mr. Gerhardi may not be the man to restore the world’s lost
faith in immortality, but he has an unfailing vivacity and he is
no matter what he may say—perpetually and contagious!s
pleased with everything, including (especially) himself.

JosepH Woop Krutcn

Mr. Saroyan’s Performance

The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze, and Other

Stories. By William Saroyan. Random House. $2.50.

R. SAROYAN has been blown toward us all of a sud-
M den, and the shock of his personality doesn’t leave one

in the best position for looking into his character. A
vivid personality he has beyond question. Indeed, he himself has
a talent for the trapeze, he more than any other new writer of
the past few years is a definite “performer”; and the real prob-
lem he presents is whether he will go on swinging in the circus,
or will step down to solid earth.

At the moment Mr. Saroyan is most of the things a serious
artist is not. He is an exhibitionist, a verbalist, a poseur, a
nose-thumber, a prima donna, and a victim of genius mania.
Those are harsh words to throw, in place of a helping hand, to a
newcomer; but if the one other thing Mr. Saroyan happens to
he—a young writer with talent—is to survive, they must he

542

The Nation

[ Vol. 139, No. 3618

thrown. He is up to his neck at present in cleverness, and if
he persists in being so clever he will end as either a fifth-rater
1r a bore. On the strength of this particular book I suspect he
vill become, to his great disadvantage, a fad.

The pieces included here are not, for the most part, stories,
ut personal essays. Time and again Saroyan begins a story,
uggests its theme, introduces its people, insists that “humanity”
or “brotherhood” is all that interests him in composition, and
then jauntily digresses to talk about himself. Suddenly he re-
ills he is writing a story and hastens to resume telling it; but
once again Saroyan gets in Saroyan’s way, and the story is for-
rotten. There have been, of course, writers who triumphed

sing the discursive method; but they wrote with a tact, a canni-
ness, a wealth of background which Saroyan hasn’t got. There
re also plenty of writers who talk largely about themselves.
But those who are successful at it are honest and, in the pro
toundest sense, consistent. Saroyan, on the one hand, postures,
ind, on the other, invents a new self tor every other story. He
; not yet in a position to be effectively autobiographical because

s personality is not yet integrated.

At his worst he writes things like the unpardonable preface
to the book, the windy The Big Tree Coming, the banal Dear
(jreta Garbo, the trivial A Curved Line. Such things must
e wholly stricken out. At other times a sincere impulse toward
elf-expression has produced exercises which are part of every
vriter’s apprenticeship but which ought never to see the light
{ day. It is in a few other stories, some of them lamed by
Saroyan’s attitudinizing and lack of restraint, some of them dis-
tivured by faulty structure and lack of the long breath, but each
4 them rich in personal expression and vigor of writing and
emembering, that a recognizable talent emerges. One knows,
it least, that one has met a fresh mind and style in such a story

Seventy Thousand Assyrians. And one knows, with some
ut much less pleasure, that one has come upon real cleverness

n Harry and Fight Your Own War.

Che future Saroyan will find it relatively easy to tollow
the tack indicated in Harry. He will find it harder to follow
the tack indicated in Seventy Thousand Assyrians. But it is

only along the latter line that he shows any promise of becom-
» sound writer; and even then he must scrap his present pile

: " +?
non essentials, harness the eco to the universe, and disdain

t
l

much that he disdains so haughtily in others.
Louis KRONENBERGER

Mr. Frank’s Seriousness

Waldo Frank.

/ Death and Birth of David Markand. By

Charles
R. FRANK is only incidentally a novelist.
lems of the novelist’s art he has simply ignored;
at all his forte; it is sufficient

e => 9
Scribner's Sons, $2.75.

Technical

prol
dramatic
for him that the emotions of his characters are made known to

Io say that the language fails in precision and

nvention is not

thre re ice r.
action falls in with mechanical facility to what

torce, that the
out ol

the author requires, that the emotions are otten spun

he conventional and the unreal, that in short the novel, qua

novel, is blunde rinvly ma le, to say all this is neither to exhaust

the defects of Mr. Frank's work nor to criticize it on the basis

of what it pretends to be. Phe Death and Birth of David

\larkand” does not pretend to be a work of art but rather a
vork of sertousness, belonging to a genre that is peculiar to Mr.
Frank.

The story is concerned with one David Markand, a wealthy
business man with a disinclination for affairs and a vague de-
To distinguish this desire

sire for higher values of some sort.
the more comm npla e lust tor lrure Mr. I rank is

careful to present Markand as an anti-literate man ill at ease
in his wife’s library of Bergson, Freud, James, and so on. Mark
and’s wife is converted to Catholicism, and in a curious state ot
jealousy he leaves her and his job. Wandering over America
he comes in contact with almost every social expression of thx
America of 1913—the I. W. W. movement, the poetry renas
cence in Chicago, the beginnings of experimental education, the
Farmer-Laborites, and finally the growing Marxian revolution
ary party. Im all his wanderings Markand goes from confu
sion to confusion, until he stumbles upon the Marxists. Fron
them he gains his first insight into what is the matter with so
ciety and with himself. He is reborn and made fit for a revolu
tionary sense of values.

The scenes in which the Southern miners are duped by the
governor of the State, in which the Wobblies discuss their strike
tactic, the poets’ revelations to the Chicago elite, are well han
died, and for all their reportorial simplicity are more moving
than anything else in the book. But Mr. Frank’s disregard for
craftsmanship has a disastrous consequence. Few readers wil!
be convinced that David Markand deserves to be reborn. In
his pursuit of values Markand meets a good many women, and
most of them go to bed with him. Chorus girls, daughters o:
millionaires, school teachers, waitresses, all want to sleep with
Markand. Whether Mr. Frank’s purpose was to show that a
man without a sense of values will live exclusively on his sex, |
cannot say, for each amour of Markand is described in such
physical detail, his sensations in the arms of each successive
woman are recounted with such lyrical completeness, that on:
becomes convinced that Mr. Frank approves his protagonist’:
technique of orientation. The effect is incredibly blurred. Sem:
readers will be justified in considering Markand a clown tramp
ing the sexual road to values, and I can imagine a sexualist
putting down Mr. Frank’s book encouraged to take himsel!
more seriously and to ascribe his sexual availability to a desire
tor truth—a comic effect for so serious an effort, and demon
strating that a disregard for craftsmanship is ultimately a dis
regard for reality.

Apparently, in the genre of the “serious,” reality plays
subsidiary role. “But now the slave need not be other men:
need not be ourselves, for other men are ourselves.” These
words coming from John Byrne, a revolutionary Marxist, ring
false. It is all very well for Markand, who seems to share most
of his creator’s philosophical prejudices, to cry out in delirium:
“There’s no need in dying. I am the raper and the killer... .
We are all one. What we do to each other we do to ourselve
That way we can bear to live.” But to make a Marxist ex
press one of Mr. Frank’s pet idealist sentimentalisms, whe:
suspicion of such lofty verbiage is practically an obsession amon;
Marxists, is, to put it mildly, tampering with reality at the ver
point where even the novelist has no rights. A novelist has thi
right to invent as much as he pleases; he can make his chara
ters of any emotional substance he likes, he can project dr
matic situations in which their philosophies, even political, a:
absurdly unrelated to the facts they face. He can show, {vu
example, a Marxian revolutionist in a situation in which lx
would be much better off if he believed in absolute idealism. H
can show how by persevering in his philosophy the Marxis:
would suffer, comically or tragically. If he did so the reade
might be stimulated to pity or laughter, and to a sense that n
philosophy is absolute and that when men adhere to a philosop!
they must risk their joy and dignity. This is the method o:
dramatic art, and the only objection to employing it is that it 1
quires a serious and resourceful talent. Mr. Frank no doul)
has other objections to this method, which should not prev:
us from objecting to what he has done. For what purpo
could Mr. Frank have had in making a Marxist express ant
Marxist notions which are also the notions of Mr. Frank
Only, I submit, the most personal of purposes, utterly irrelev:

ow
ing

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November 7, 1934]

‘The Nation a4

to any aesthetic or philosophic aim. And it is a shabby trick to

play on a fictitious character incapable of defending his honesty
izainst his creator.

The truth of the matter is that there is no such genre as
the serious. Mr. Frank’s seriousness amounts to nothing more
than a passionate conviction that life must be taken seriously.
But to take life seriously, just as to take it trivially, in a real
vay, one must have a technique. Mr. Frank has no technique.
He is neither a Marxist nor a subscriber to the total Mind, to
speak philosophically. He is neither an inventor in dramatic
rt nor humbly obedient to its laws. His seriousness is thus
nly a fury to philosophize. And every freshman in philosophy

ows the fury to philosophize, and no one knows it better than

e freshman. Lionet ABEL

y ~
Van Gogh as Hero
ist for Life. By Irving Stone. Longmans, Green and Com-
pany. $2.50.

HE eccentric and dismal events of Vincent Van Gogh's
life have too often aroused the thwarted novelist in art
critics. Such men as Thomas Craven betray an odd de-
rht in the Grand Guignol for its own sake.
e severed ear, the exaggerated passions, the epileptic seizures
f that sick and maladjusted man. Even worse, they allow their
own tragic words to infect their criticism of Van Gogh's paint-
ng. Mr. Stone, I take it, is a novelist. From a novelist one
might have hoped for a dispassionate and honest attempt to
clarify and explain the behavior of an extremely interesting
human being. During the first part of Mr. Stone’s book I felt
that some such clarification was perhaps his goal. He contrives
to make Vincent’s reactions among the coal miners fairly plaus-
ble and really moving. But as page after page went by, planted
with incredibly heavy ironies, I began to suspect that Mr. Stone
had fallen into the old attitude of unquestioning sentimental
lentification with his hero. Any person who enters the novel
infortunate enough to prefer the clothes of average decency to
ttle rabbit-skin hats and laborers’ denim is immediately hooted
it of countenance with muted jeers. My objection to this
ttitude of “They were all out of step but Jim” is simply that
is unfair to Van Gogh. No truth can come out of this re-
‘usal to judge. How much more penetrating and serious a
tudy might be made of Van Gogh by a writer less willing to

ept a sort of mystical rightness in all his actions.
Almost in spite of Mr. Stone I found myself sympathizing
vith the charming girl who fled from Van Gogh’s advances cry-
For Van Gogh emerges as one of

They gloat over

“No, never, never!”

those anti-social monsters born into civilization to their own

nisery and the acute discomfort of all around them. Their
notions, however sincere and disarmingly noble, have no brakes
ich as usually restrain individuals better adjusted to society.
[hey are so egocentric that to conceive of the probable reac-
ns of their fellows is an impossibility for them.

‘That Van Gogh’s inability to form any graceful human re-
tion stemmed from this want of imagination in regard to
thers Mr. Stone shows clearly, but he somehow implies it is
e fault of the others. Of course it is usual to bring forward
e artist’s genius as an excuse for any defection from civilized

ndards. “Lust for Life” sounds again and again the note
it all artists are mad. The greatest have not found sanity
ompatible with creation, but have rather transcended by
litv and a kind of knowingness. Yet it is impossible not to
mpathize with this distorted and gifted man. The mere out-
ne of his awkward way through the world is full of moving
nplications, implications of the grandeur and absurdity of hu-

reigns: - Nee ; —-
ian feeling and conduct, of the inevitable struggle of the indi

vidual to survive in any social system. No one could read “Lust
for Life” unmoved; but because the theme itself is so essentiall)
serious, one must resent certain phases of Mr. Stone’s approach
that are belittling to it. I refer particularly to an episode in
which he causes an imaginary woman to appear before Vincent
in long white robes and sandals, like some creature out o:
Arthur B. Davies. She tells him her name is Maya, that slx
has always been with him and watched over him and loved him.
She tells him he is beautiful because his soul is beautiful. But
she does not stop there.

“Kiss me, Vincent,” she said.

He kissed her on the mouth. Her lips were no longer
cool. They lay side by side in the rich, crumbly loam
The woman kissed his eyes, his ears, the nostrils of his
nese, the declivity of his upper lip, bathed the inside of

}

ae f :
his mouth with her sweet soft tongue, ran her fingers

Whether or not this episode is intended as a lyrical short-cut to
something Mr. Stone was too lazy to work out in fact, it is
inexcusably silly. Fortunately it falls far below the level of the
rest of the book.

Mr. Stone apparently does not conceal a thwarted art criti
under the novelist. There are whole pages of conversation like
excerpts trom some Introduction to Modern Art. When he ¢
scribes a painting he is usually content to indicate the subject
some of the colors, or perhaps to say it reeks of bacon, smoke
ind potato steam. I do not mean to suggest that he should ha:
done more than this. Too much about the picturtés would hav:
impeded his real theme. But he implies that the paintings ar:

}

good, and I agree with him. Roperr \lorsr

Apotheosis of a Heroine

A |WWorld in Birth. By Romain Rolland.
Company. $2.50.
WORLD IN BIRTH” is the last of the five volumes of
the cycle known as “The Soul Enchanted.” In its six
hundred pages Rolland attempts an apotheosis of his
heroine, the “soul enchanted.” Annette aids and abets a num
ber of younger people in their random struggles for very ill-
defined ends. She witnesses the murder of her son in a brawl

Henry Holt and

with Italian Fascists. She encourages another youth to throw
his life away in a gesture equally futile but even more poetical.
And, finally, she convinces herself that, dying at a ripe age of
angina, she is “taking her share in the holocaust of her sons.”
Ot course everyone dies sooner or later of one disease or an-
other, if not by some grosser folly, but it seems not unlikely that
Ananias and Saphira, as well as Dr. Arnold of Rugby and
Romain Rolland’s Annette, incurred the “martyrdom” of an
gina. Rolland shuts his eyes to such possibilities. His “moral
nobility,” as he says of one of his characters, obscures his sight.
Rolland’s treatment of birth is as unrealistic as his treatment
of death. here is Julian, for instance. Julian wanted to
marry Annette but his family wouldn’t let him. So he married
somebody e!se. Yet when his wife had a child he was sure

and Rolland is equally sure—that this daughter resembled An

nette. “He recognized certain details imperceptible to other
eyes, a downy shadow at the corner of the lips, the carriage of
the neck, the pronounciation of certain consonants, remarks she
had made, and God knows what else!” God, indeed, must have
taken a hand, or the father of all unreality! Such absurdities
would not matter if Rolland would confine himself to romance
and stop bothering about the world. But when he declares that
all the sorrow of Annette’s life “had been the angle of inflection
of the forward march of Destiny,” we may naturally wish
there should be no weak links in the chain of his logic and no
flaws in his major assumptions.

544

The Nation

| Vol. 139, No. 3618

| (] JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH says (|

\ SLEEPING CLERGYMAN. Guild Theater. A dour but pas-
sionate play about genius and rebellion in a Scottish family.
Splendidly acted and not to be missed

!
DODSWORTH Shubert Sidney Hloward’s beautiful
If you did not see it last

dramatization of Sinclair Lewis’s novel

Theater.

season you should this a
DOYLY CARTE OPERA COMPANY. Gilbert and Sullivan
Operas Martin Beck Theater. English company in the best

performances of the familiar operas that you are likely ever

en ce

IUDGMENT DAY. Fulton Theater. Continuous and deafening
excitement provided by Elmer Rice's idea of what the Reichstag
fire trial would be like if it were repeated in another fascist

unt?

LIFE BEGINS AT 8:40 A lively, talented, amusing show with
several sketches above the average. ‘he best of them is “Chin
Up,” which makes an English gentleman out of Bert Lahr. M.M.
OST HORIZON. St. James Theater. A solemn play in which
he heroine is a suicide, compelled to learn in the beyond how
the life she cut off would have benefited others whom she does

t even know. Most persons would accept the idea as inter

10
esting

NIERRILY WE ROLL ALONG. Music Box.

vitty but rather mechanical drama about the youth of various
successful men who meant when they were young to do really
mportant things. Reveals the authors, Moss Hart and George
Kaufman, in a mood rather more serious than usual.
PERSONAL APPEARANCE. Henry Miller Theater.

-ady entertainment with more laughs of the sort which origi-

Ingenious, smooth,

Rough and

ite below the neck than very many comedies can boast
MIALL MIRACLE. Golden Theater. Theft, murder, and adultery
1 theater lobby. For those who like thick slices of what the

riters of snappy melodrama call Life.

lEVEDORE. Civie Repertory Theater. The Theater Union's
incendiary but impressive melodrama of race trouble in the South.
rHE DISTAFF SIDE. Booth Theater. Much charm but very
ttle excitement provided by John van Druten’s mild play about
» mild English family. Dame Sybil Thorndike is the mild mother.

rOBACCO ROAD. Forrest Theater. Sub-human but fascinating

havior of the Georgia crackers

ff OPEN SHELF Oo |

|
The SEX TECHNIQUE

IN MARRIAGE e ByI.E. Hutton, MD.

Dr. Ira Wile describes the book a8 a clear, succinct, non-emotional, authort-

; ervative exposition of the practical factors Involved in making

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is primarily erned with the conduct of the honeymoon and with

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Price $2.00 (postage 15c extra) Recommended by Physicians

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marriage
It

WHEN A LESBIAN MARRIES
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her husband or a Lesbian? Here

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Marries appears in the current teoue

The Modern Psychologist
edited by Dagobert D. Runes, PhD,

Among Other Articles in Current Issues:
Getting Rid of Self-¢ onsciousness—A. A. Roback, Ph.D.
Work and Vitality—Louis Berman, M.D.
The Science of Hypnotism—Thomas L. Garrett, M.D.
Hallucinations and Alcohol—Leon F. Renault
The Unconscious and Its Creations—James Oppenheim

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When writing to advertisers please me

Remembering Rolland’s popularity as a novelist and the
reverence that has been accorded hm as a prophet, one is
shocked by the windy vacuity of this volume, its deficiency as a

tract, and its utter failure as fiction. A propagandist should be
more statistical. A novelist should be less abstract; he should
have more detailed information and should give a more vivid
account of particular cases and of particular scenes. It is not
enough to say that a husband and wife were estranged by “a
consciousness of the social uselessness of their lives.” An author
who has a hundred and fifty pages to devote to such an episode
might certainly be more dramatic. And if a marriage can be
undermined by such a consciousness of social uselessness, then
why bring in a banal seduction? One has difficulty in submit
ting to the leadership of a mind in which the reiteration ot
opinion takes the place of information and evidence—a mind,
furthermore, which after many years of apprenticeship has failed
to develop or forgotten how to display the most elementary skil!
in the use of its chosen medium, the method of fiction.
Rogerts Tapiry

P ° ° ;
Catholic Family Portrait
The Anteroom. By Kate O’Brien. Doubleday, Doran and Com
pany. $2.50.

WO years ago Miss O’Brien’s first novel, “Without My
Cloak,” won the Hawthornden prize and achieved a no-
table success. It was a livelier piece of work than “The

Anteroom,” with a larger cast moving on a wider stage. But
the purity of style, the subtlety of characterization, the fine sen-
sitiveness that made “Without My Cloak” so satisfying and
unusual a first performance have no less scope in the more re-
stricted area and quieter key of this second novel.

She has adopted in “The Anteroom” a time-device which
lends to it from beginning to end an intensity subdued by grief,
a general suspense beneath which individual dramas proceed.
The Mulqueens, cousins of the Considines of “Without My
Cloak,” and like them a Catholic family of wealth and position,
are gathered at the house where Teresa Mulqueen, the mother,
lies dying of cancer. An English specialist who happens to be
in the country is brought down to pronounce on the question ot
one more operation, and on the day before his arrival the pa-
tient’s brother, Father Tom Considine, comes to hold Mass for
the household at her bedside. The entire action of the novel
takes place within these two days, the Eve of All Saints’ and the
Feast of All Saints, and the one following, the Feast of Al!
Souls. Gathered in “the anteroom,” waiting for the verdict
which apart from their common emotion affects them and their
lives all difterently, Teresa’s children see their lives also come
to a climax during this period. While the mother prepares to
die, they, watching in pain for her, have to solve the problems
which make it hard for them, individually, to live.

The narrowness of her chosen framework compels Miss
O’Brien to a neatness of plot which is not always credible. Her
portraiture, too, is more sketchy throughout than it was in the
earlier novel. Yet her characters have life, within the limits
she has set them, and charm. And the setting of “The Ante-
room” permits her to convey with delicacy, sympathy, and ob-
jectiveness the living reality of Catholic faith in which such
families as the Mulqueens exist.

R. S. ALEXANDER

In next week's issue Maxwell 8. Stewart will re-
view “Russia's Tron Age,” by William Henry Cham-

berlin.

f t The Nation

cate
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DER

November 7, 1934]

‘The Nation

ty
+

Shorter Notices

My Shadow as I Pass.
$2.50.

To those who knew him even slightly, William Bolitho
vas a strange and fascinating man. Fire burned somewhere in
m, the fire, probably, of a passionate intelligence, an inex-
sustible curiosity about life. Every experience that he had he
nust have looked at freshly, as if no other man had ever had a
milar experience before. The world to him was a great jig-

saw puzzle that he had to put together anew every day, and
the zeal that he brought to the task was evident in every word
- wrote. It is a tribute to his widow, writing, in this book,
the story of their love affair and marriage, that she communi-
ates this quality to the reader. And she communicates, too,
her grief at his death in a meaningless accident, and her feeling
f being more dead than he, and lost in a world without him.
She has written a little idyl of love and grief, indeed, and only
her rather hysterical literary style keeps the book from being
is impressive as it should be. For it is a curious paradox of
vriting that passionate feeling can be expressed more passion-
tely by understatement than by exclamation marks. Both Mrs.
Bolitho and her readers were let down by the want of a ju-
ious editorial blue pencil.

By Sybil Bolitho. The Viking Press.

D Is for Dutch. By Thames Williamson.
Company. $2.50.

Here is an extraordinary thing—a novel by a highly edu-
cated American which manages to catch all the bareness and
melodramatic horror of a folk tale or a ballad. Its hero, Her-
man Bauer, was a stolid, hard-working, Pennsylvania Dutch
farmer until in an old trunk in an attic he found his mother’s
powwow book. His mother had been a kindly woman who
used her lore to cure her ailing neighbors, but the book worked
both ways, for good and evil. Bitten by lust and greed, fasci-
nated by the power he felt in himself, Herman began to pow-
wow for his own ends. A neighbor whose farm Herman cov-
eted was sick of parrot fever, and when his wife, a loose, pretty
woman, called Herman in to cure him, Herman determined to
hex him to his death. From that moment horrors rush on
swiftly, too swiftly for Herman himself to comprehend. His
power turns him into a satanic figure, but Satan’s boots are too
large for him. Half a spectator and half a blind actor, Herman
sees the neighbor die, finds himself in love with the wife, and
plans to kill his own comfortable, broad-hipped Katy, that he
may marry her. But here the powwow book fails him. His
iexing frightens the light-headed widow into suicide, and Her-
man, his magic drained out of him, is forced to go on with his
laily life, living on his dead neighbor’s rich farm with Katy, who
knows that he meant to kill her. This fearful, half-supernatu-
ral tale is told with incisiveness and skill. Mr. Williamson
has used the curious dialect of the Pennsylvania Dutch to
enormous advantage. The simplicity of his style is the sim-
plicity of their speech. Not for a moment is the reader pulled
away from the isolated, archaic world of these superstitious
farmers. Mr. Williamson himself has been completely absorbed
by his material.

Harcourt, Brace and

Babouk. By Guy Endore. The Vanguard Press. $2.

With Babouk, the African Negro who has another name in
istory, as his hero, Mr. Endore has reconstructed the story of
the eighteenth-century slave trade, of life on a plantation in
Haiti, and of the great rebellion which Toussaint L’Ouverture
ed. The method is, somewhat too obviously, satirical, and the
final chapter indicates his real thesis, the slavery of all men
It is evident that Mr. Endcre spent much

nder capitalism.

O PLAYS 0 FILMS 2)

]

——THE THEATRE GUILD presenter:

A SLEEPING CLERGYMAN

By JAMES BRIDIB
GUILD THEATRE (inistes Thun. sed ‘Sate 230.

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| O LITERARY PARTY AND AUCTION 0 |

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Consult

"JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH says" when making
your selection of plays, appearing on page 544
in this issue.

When writing to advertisers please mention ‘ibe Natu

546 The Nation

[ Vol. 139, No. 3618

delved into old letters, diaries, and

He ha
But his

fiction. Pr

time in research.

ination has not fused his material

ibly he has too

psychology of these slaves, de-

nt books.

a 0

into dramatic many purposes in

He

ribe their lives and customs
He would present facts, and he would also throw into satirical
African s| and those of the white
planters and make it quite evident for profit de-

is best at describing pictorial

mind. would analyze the

ind probe their inarticulateness.

t the lives of the ives

that the desire
stroys al! human decency. He
Negro dances, of the stupid displays of white wealth,
of the horrors of the rebellion. Babouk is not the

ences of

ind finally

1
is merely one Ola good

The book is full,

. ae er ’
enter of the story aS he snouia an

many fieures who happen to hold the st

liary or notebook might be, of interesting facts, observa-
tions, and descriptions. But it lacks narrative continuity and
ramatic value; it also lacks consistency of tone. And the last

’ . . = are.
chapter, in which the revolutionary theme, the denunciation ot

capitalism as slavery, is written down, is bad writing, almost
fake poetry.
Drama
<
O’C ’s Charade
j ‘ al Ty ‘ * ¢
Mr. wasey Ss Charade
HE American public was not left unprepared for “Within
the Gates” by Sean O'Casey. A few Sundays ago the
uthor explained through the columns of the New York
Tin just how his play was to be taken and just why it was
reat. Now the program at the National Theater contains an

nsert in which the symbolism is reexplained for the benefit of
those who did not hear him the first time, and, on the whole, the
press at least has responded to these promptings with gratifying
nanimity. ‘Within the Gates” was received with more whole-
earted salvos of critical approval than have fallen to the lot of
ny very pretentious play seen here in years.

Any tendency on my part to moderate my transports will
} My colleagues will set it

taken, | fear, as sheer perversity.

! » to be different: but they will be wrong if they

own to

I went with no more trepid itions than one usually feels on

ision for which inuch has been promised, and I sat with

ended judement through the whole of the first scene, in

h the Atheist p es God, the Young Whore looks for

| nd the Bishop tries to get in touch with the Common Peo-

ple. I thought, as the author had bid me do, about the triviality

‘ te vrary theater, about the greatness of the ancient

play thout our need to recapture in art as in life

ense of th pain ind’ the ecstasy and the greatness of hu

ter tut so far as [T was concerned, it was, frankly,

Lhe declamation d the gestures remained merely dec

tion and ( Che poetry and the symbolism seemed

\ | intentioned and, for the most nart, im rea onably

ood tast But “Within the Gates” did not seem really to earn

the title of ther poet lrama or genuinely iJluminating al

On th ntrary it remained only (to use in a spe ific

\lr. Vi HNeott’s favorite synonym for the drama in all its

icl ide--grave, elaborate, and doubtless the product

of r t but t ! on is concerned, merely
' 4 { i

One dit It either that | do not know what Mr.

‘au t ' f to me more probable, that

I kno only too \ | ither some Message to which I am

tit ly not attuned is cunningly hidden beneath a mass

rf nventional, rather adolescent verbiage or the author is

merely saving at great length and with the intense air of a dis

overer what we have all said about Life when the mood was

IVhen writing to advertisers please mention The Nation

and (to give t -

is mighty, love is sweet, i
nefit of just that sort of distinguished utt |
ance he himself so sadly lacks) the world belongs “to him whe I

upon us. oOpring
author’s idea the be
strenuous tongue can crush joy’s grape against his palate fine
That youth knows the secret which age has forgotten, that
priests are cowards, and that prudent men are dumb cattle
this and all the rest that goes with it may be either a romant
notion or it may be, as I do solemnly believe, the greatest and
most important of truths. But though the great and simp!
commonplaces are the best subjects for the greatest art, they ar:
also the most difficult, and to repeat them in the form of direct
generalities is to challenge immediate comparison with the finest
of the race which has known them and used then

utterance
since it first lisped in numbers. This comparison Mr. O’Casey s

like all but one in ten million, is far from meeting. His them: §
is the theme which the public always thinks about when it hea .
the word “poetry”; perhaps it is, indeed, something about as

near as one could get to a common denominator for all poet
But the whole of his feeling and expression is oddly undifferen =
tiated from the common denominator as such. He seems ¢ i
have no tone, no accent, no gesture of his own. He is mere}; hae

resolutely poetic. Nor can one fail to be struck by the less R|
ontained in the fact that an author whose style and manner is

so individual when he writes in his semi-realistic plays about «
specific characters in specific situations should so completely |: a
all distinction of language when he turns to the more complete; -
abstract. $Loc
Consider, to take a single example, the central characte:
vio appears as the Dreamer—surely the most hackneyed of ail aaae
yoetic symbols. Or consider a brief excerpt from the auth: K
vn gloss upon his personages: as
;
The Dreamer, a symbol of a noble restlessness and ve
discontent; of the stir in life that brings to birth new things : —
and greater things than those that were before; of the

power to realize that the urge of life is above the level of
conventional morality; of ruthlessness to get near to the

things that matter, and sanctify them with intelligence, nce 1

energy, gracefulness, and song; of rebellion against AE}

stupidity ... Gt!
Phat is a large as well as an admirable program, a good deal —
ror one symbol to hold. But the language which the personag:

peaks, like the language in which he is described, has that same
undistinguished, undifferentiated character referred to above ro
Chere is nothing to set the language apart, no evidence that it Vatkir
This is only the raw material of a kin
uf poetry common to all of us who feel so freshly what com

out of us so tamely, and who know from that very tameness 0!
our utterance that we are not poets. And what is true of th:
language seems to me to be very largely true of the play a

The purpose is laudable and deserves whatever praises

has been minted anew.

whole.

and encouragement laudable purpose may deserve. But MM: | thre
O’Casey does not so much say the things he has to say as
that he wants to say them. The stage has need of plays of pas rept
sion, and poetry, and joy. But I find it hard to be very gratefu | The
ior a play which does not get much farther than to tell us that
we need these things. “col
[ shall have to postpone until next week any further notice | —
4 Noel Coward’s “Conversation Piece” (Forty-fourth Street —
Theater), in which some charming pageantry and the presence | ticle
of Yvonne Printemps redeem what otherwise the author wou!
probably call “a faintly dullish evening.” Said
Josre11 Woop Keaurtcii | trict

The Fifty Best Books of 1934
A list compiled by the editors of The Nation will appear
in the Christmas book number.

onio

uppe

of
he

ce,

d aceal
sonagt
t same
above
that it
a ki
> con

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of th

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appear

———

November 7, 1934]

The Nation

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IN THE GREAT HALL
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Friday, November 9th
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GERSHON AGRONSKY

Noted journalist, news correspondent tn the Mid-
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The Nation [ Vol. 139, No. 3618

War Clouds in the Balkans

Next week THE NATION will publish the first of a series of four articles by Professor Oscar Jaszi, of
Oberlin University, on racial, economic, and political forces in the Balkans. Dr. Jaszi discloses that
nationalist rivalries, economic and political oppressions, were endemic in the Balkans even before the
murder of King Alexander. In the light of these facts the recent tragedy takes on heightened and

immediate significance.

An exile from his native Hungary since the beginning of the bloody Horthy dictatorship, Dr. Jaszi is
an outstanding authority on the problems of nationality in the Danubian states. He sums up his re-

searches made last summer on his latest trip to the Balkans with this ominous prophecy:

“Either the Danubian nations will in a very short time carry out funda-
mental reforms, or the new war will come which will bring on a revolu-
tion solving the agricultural problem, not with cooperatives but with
kolhoz; the nationality problem, not with free autonomies but with
soviets; and the constitutional problem, not with a free system of federal-

ism but with the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

In the Same Issue

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